Slashlorette Party (2020) and Some Fixations

Once in a while, I’ll watch a movie and get really hung up on a single detail. It’s not to the point where it will ruin the movie. There just happens to be one little tidbit that sticks out and makes me think much longer than I should about it. I wouldn’t call it a nitpick. I’m not complaining about a small detail as if they got some continuity wrong. It’s more an observation than anything. But I can’t stop thinking about that thing. It sticks in my brain in a way that it shouldn’t.

What I want to do is go over a few movies within Sunday “Bad” Movies that had these types of things. Something within the story that has me sitting here, wondering why they wrote it like that. This could end up being one of the shortest posts in a while, or it could end up being my opus. I don’t know. I haven’t planned it. All I know is that I’m going to start with the movie I just watched, the movie that inspired this whole idea.

Slashlorette Party was a slasher film set at a combination bachelor/bachelorette party. Brie (Molly Souza) was having second thoughts about marrying Dolph (Andrew Brown). He was emotionally abusive, and she had nightmares where he turned physical. She only went through with the party because it had already been planned with all their friends at a rented cottage. Things turned bad, however, when the friends were attacked by masked men.

The combination bachelor/bachelorette party wasn’t so out of the ordinary. That’s something that happens. People would rather have their final party before marriage together than separate. You want to be with the person. Why would you want that extra time away to get things out of your system? It’s not necessary. So you throw the party together with your friends. A sort of pre-reception, pre-wedding party where you get to have fun without the formality.

It was one of the events that happened at the combined party that threw me for a loop. One of the stereotypical events of a bachelor or bachelorette party is to have a stripper come in to perform for the lucky lady or gentleman. Slashlorette Party had a stripper scene, but things got a little odd. The bachelor and bachelorette were placed in chairs across from one another. They had to watch the other one get a lap dance. They weren’t entirely comfortable with it. I don’t know why either of them agreed to it. Dolph got angry when the stripper rubbed up against Brie. Why would you include this at your party if you weren’t okay with it? It baffled me. I’m still sitting here wondering why they would choose to do that. It didn’t make a whole lot of sense.

This is the kind of thing I mean when I say that I’m not nitpicking. Maybe I’m nitpicking. But I’m not nitpicking the quality of Slashlorette Party like people tend to attack the quality of a movie when they nitpick. I’m more nitpicking the motivations of Brie and Dolph when they agreed to be cucks to each other’s lap dances. If you aren’t comfortable with it, you shouldn’t agree to it. It was an odd thing for either character to want to experience on the eve of their wedding.

Slashlorette Party wasn’t nearly the only movie with a moment like this that I cocked my head and wondered why it was there. Or one that was so random I couldn’t stop laughing. Things that I fixated on because something about them wouldn’t stop scratching the darkest crevices of my brain. There have been plenty, partially because I’ve seen plenty of movies, and partially because I definitely have something undiagnosed going on. I’ll get around to that at some point, but not now. Now is for those little pieces of movies.

Let me take you to the Birdemic franchise. None of them were particularly good movies. The third was atrocious because of a lack of effort, but I’m not looking at that movie. I want to take a look at Birdemic 2: The Resurrection. However, to get context for this moment, I need to quickly glance back at Birdemic: Shock and Terror.

The first Birdemic movie came out and was almost instantly deemed a modern bad movie classic, in the same vein as Troll 2 and The Room. There was a lot of heart and effort put into the movie, yet it all failed miserably. Maybe not all. Birdemic did have that Damien Carter banger partway through. The vast majority of it didn’t have any level of quality, though. It was a love story turned road trip survival story, where the romantic couple became surrogate parents for two children they found in a van. They caught fish at the beach to eat, met a nature guy who told them all about global warming and other bad ecological things. You know, basic family stuff.

Jump ahead to Birdemic 2: The Resurrection and only one of the children remained. This was where we got the moment. This was where my mind started racing because I was so in shock with what just happened. The remaining kid made a remark about how his sister would have loved to see a museum, had she not died from food poisoning from the fish they ate in the first movie. What was that comment? Why was it in there? It made the hero of the movie, or rather the secondary hero in the sequel, look like a bad guy. He not only couldn’t save his friends in the first film, but he caused the death of the child he took in. What a weird choice.

Also, now that I think about it… Why did they still have one of the two children anyway? I understand that the parents died during the bird attack of the first movie. That made sense for taking the kids in. But in the aftermath, after everything settled down, wouldn’t the kids have gone with extended family? Wouldn’t they have gone into foster care? I have so many questions stemming from this one moment. Birdemic 2: The Resurrection turned one line into such a crazy thread spiral in my mind.

I could make an entire post like this just for Nicolas Cage movies, but I won’t do that yet. This isn’t the time for a whole bunch of Nicolas Cage. I’ll, instead, give you a little taste through one choice in Ghost Rider. No, not the sequel. The first Ghost Rider movie that Nicolas Cage was in. The one where he was basically Evel Knievel. Yeah, that one. There’s one detail in that one that I’ve been stuck on ever since I first saw the movie.

So you’ve got Johnny Blaze, a stunt performer who just jumped over… I can’t remember if it was the semi-trucks or the helicopters. Either way, he was in his room talking to his friend. He had a martini class. However, the glass was filled with jellybeans instead of a martini. What I can only assume happened was that the screenwriter wanted to have Johnny Blaze as an alcoholic because of how rough his job and his superpower were. The studio didn’t want the movie to be that hard, though, so they asked the director to pull it back. Rather than rewriting the scene, they substituted alcohol for candy. And there we go.

I don’t know if that’s true at all. It’s an assumption, twenty years after the making of the movie. I had nothing to do with it. Whatever the case, it left this strange image of Nicolas Cage sitting around with a martini glass full of jellybeans. This moment became one of those quintessential Nicolas Cage moments, even if it wasn’t dependent on his strange choices as an actor. It was the strange choices of the movie that brought it about.

One final movie I want to bring up is Scream Returns. It was a French fan film for the Scream franchise made before the newer sequels started coming out. There was some real weird stuff in there, none more notable than the scene I’m about to get into. Yes, a full scene, not just a moment. The scene was so crazy that I’ve been thinking about it ever since. You know when you see something and you’re just blown away by it? Yeah, that’s what this was.

There was a moment in Scream Returns where the action went from live action to animated. Specifically, it was animated by a video game engine. It was Grand Theft Auto V, okay? Trevor popped up and fought with Ghostface. It was a whole big fight scene in Michael’s house in Grand Theft Auto V between Trevor and Ghostface. I could not believe my eyes. It wasn’t ten million fireflies, but it sure was something.

This scene didn’t really get me thinking. It wasn’t one of those moments where I questioned why it happened. All I could think about was what I saw unfolding. I never expected to watch a movie and see a GTA V character going up against a slasher villain. It wasn’t on my horror bingo card. But I saw it and it was glorious. It was all I could have hoped for and more. Why did it happen, though? I don’t know, but it was great.

There are moments all throughout film history that will make you wonder why they were done the way they were done. Or they’ll make me wonder. Because I’m like that. I get hung up on small moments. I get hung up on moments that might pass other people by. They stick with me in a way that makes me think about them far longer than I should. These moments become a part of who I am. Yeah, it’s a me thing.

What I like about Sunday “Bad” Movies is that they teach me to embrace things about movies and things about myself. Would I have written this post if I hadn’t seen Slashlorette Party? Probably not. Would I have seen Slashlorette Party had it not been for this blog? Probably not. But I did and I did, so there’s that. I love this blog.

It’s about time we got some notes in here:

• I mentioned a few other movies in this post. Birdemic: Shock and Terror, Birdemic 2: The Resurrection, Birdemic 3: Sea Eagle, Ghost Rider, Troll 2, The Room, and Scream Returns.
• The only actor from Slashlorette Party to be in another movie for Sunday “Bad” Movies was Drew Marvick, who was in Another WolfCop.
• Have you seen Slashlorette Party? What did you think? Are there any other movies you can think of that had moments that you fixated on? Let me know your thoughts in the comments, of you can find me on Bluesky or Threads.
• If there’s a movie you think I should check out for Sunday “Bad” Movies, drop that suggestion on Bluesky or Threads, or you could drop it in the comments.
• Now I’m going to do a quick little look ahead. I only have one post on the docket right now. It’s a nice little franchise post, so I’ll be looking at four movies. More specifically, I’ll be looking at the four Bandit television movies from the early 1990s. You know, the reboot of Smokey and the Bandit? Yeah. I’m not sure what I’ll write, but I’m going to write about them. See you soon for that one.

#AMFAD: All My Friends Are Dead (2024) and Rambling About Stunt Casting

There’s nothing like a little stunt casting to get a movie going. You bring that special someone in for a day of filming and it boosts the recognition of the movie by an exponential amount. A quick cameo that audiences will talk about. An appearance by a popular non-actor in an acting role. Even better, a movie built around a non-actor. The possibilities are endless. As long as that one person shows up in the movie, the movie will be unstoppable.

Sunday “Bad” Movies has featured a bunch of movies that used the non-actor stunt casting to help find an audience. Gymkata took an Olympic gymnast in Kurt Thomas and built an action movie around merging his gymnastics with fighting. Cool as Ice took the persona that Vanilla Ice presented himself as and tried to play it off as the cool hero type. I recently saw Showdown, which placed Tae Bo master Billy Blanks in the Mr. Miyagi role of a Karate Kid-like. And let’s not forget Grumpy Cat’s Worst Christmas Ever. That was a whole Hallmark Christmas movie made to star a popular cat from the internet.

The horror genre might be the one most associated with stunt casting because of the lengths they’ll go to for stunt casting to be a thing. Horror might be the only genre to retroactively stunt cast actors. Let me explain how. Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation came out in 1995. It starred Renée Zellweger and Matthew McConaughey, who weren’t big stars when it was made. Nobody paid attention to it when it first came out. Those actors rose to popularity soon after, and it was re-released in 1997 to capitalize on their fame. As if they were stunt cast for their statuses. That might not be the best example. Here’s another one. Cutting Class was a 1989 direct-to-video horror flick featuring Brad Pitt. I can’t tell you much more about it, but it has only been sold using Brad Pitt’s giant face for the past 25 years in those multi-pack DVDs.

Stunt casting in horror has been a thing since at least the Abbott and Costello Meets movies. It has remained a major device to help push horror and amuse the filmmakers. 1978’s Halloween had stunt casting. Jamie Lee Curtis was cast in the lead role in part because she was the daughter of Janet Leigh, the star of Psycho. Janet Leigh would later show up in Halloween H20, a little bit of stunt casting because of her horror history and to be on screen with her daughter. The Scream franchise has done lots of stunt casting. The first film was promoted as a Drew Barrymore movie, only for her to die in the opening scene. The Stab movies shown in-universe featured many notable names as part of their casts. Jay and Silent Bob even showed up in Scream 3. There’s lots of this kind of stuff in horror.

Low budget horror is where stunt casting really shines, though. The entire cast might be a bunch of relatively unknown actors, except for one recognizable face in a small role. That one recognizable face will be who the filmmakers use to sell the movie to audiences. They will want to know what that person was like in the movie, even if their role was only a scene or two. What did they do with their screentime? Curiosity always wins out.

Take #AMFAD: All My Friends Are Dead, for example. On their way to a music festival, Sarah (Jade Pettyjohn) and her friends suffered a blown tire. They were forced to rent an Airbnb. The only problem? Someone knew the Airbnb they booked and started killing them, themed to the seven deadly sins, as revenge for the suicide of Collette (Jojo Siwa) a year earlier. They had to put aside their quarrels to work together if any of them wanted to make it out alive.

When I say low budget horror, I don’t mean micro. Micro-budget horror doesn’t typically have the means to stunt cast someone. I’m talking the $500k to $2 million range, something that #AMFAD: All My Friends Are Dead certainly fell into. It was part of a 10-film deal at $15 million. If I’m to understand that correctly, that would be about $1.5 million per movie. This is the exact low-budget horror realm I mean. It’s enough to pay for a notable name to make a small appearance, while paying the rest of the lesser-known cast and crew to do the more intensive work. The budget can’t be micro because that wouldn’t cover the person’s fee. But when it gets into low budget territory, that’s when a producer can stunt cast someone to be the face that a movie can be sold on.

There are a couple ways that low-budget horror flicks utilize stunt casting to promote themselves. They essentially come down to the same things. One is to use someone in promotional material prior to release. Trailers, posters, that sort of stuff. Drum up the hype by letting people know this person shows up. The other way is to use their image in thumbnails on streaming services. That’s what brought my attention to #AMFAD: All My Friends Are Dead. I was scrolling through Tubi and they smacked me in the face with Jojo Siwa in the thumbnail. I wondered what a Jojo Siwa horror movie would be like. They got me.

The thing about stunt casting is that it doesn’t typically have that recognizable face in a big role. Unless that performer has passed the peak of their fame, such as in The Asylum movies, or the performer is in one of their earliest roles, a la Jamie Lee Curtis in Halloween. Most times, it would be too expensive to stunt cast for major roles. Smaller roles mean less money. It’s like paying for a shoutout on Cameo. That allows lower budget movies to get that recognizable face. Jojo Siwa was only in a couple scenes of #AMFAD: All My Friends Are Dead. The montage of her character, a flashback, and her death scene. The story being told took place a year after all that stuff. But her small appearance was enough to promote the movie with her name and image.

Stunt casting doesn’t mean that a movie is bad. The filmmakers aren’t trying to trick audiences. Not in a quality way, at least. There’s the trick of promoting a movie off someone who isn’t the star. But the overall quality of the movie might still be good. Scream was promoted with the star power of Drew Barrymore. Her character died twenty minutes in. That didn’t take away from the rest of the movie, which was also good. The stunt casting of Drew Barrymore got people to see the movie. The quality kept them interested.

Let’s go back to #AMFAD: All My Friends Are Dead one more time. It might have been a lower budget movie, but that didn’t mean it was a lower quality movie. It was fine. The performances were mostly decent, minus maybe the lazy guy, but I think that was the writing. The idea behind the movie was interesting enough, being a cross between I Know What You Did Last Summer and Se7en. The kills were fun enough. The digital mask of the villain was maybe the most interesting thing. It wasn’t a terrible movie. Could it have been better? Sure. Was it fitting of being in Sunday “Bad” Movies? Yes. The size of Jojo Siwa’s role wasn’t going to make or break the movie, though.

The most important part of stunt casting is getting eyes on a movie. It’s a tool to get an audience. The quality is a result of the hard work of everyone else. They should go hand in hand. Stunt cast to get the eyes. Good quality to keep the eyes. That’s not always the case. Take The Asylum, for example. They’ve made an endless number of bad movies, stunt casting people like Tiffany and Debbie Gibson, Reginald VelJohnson, Linda Hamilton, Jamie Kennedy, and Jaleel White. Hell, the Sharknado movies were nothing but cameo after cameo to get people to watch them. Stunt casting happens all the time.

The idea behind stunt casting is that it will bring eyes to a project from people who may not have checked it out otherwise. This, in turn, could get more people to invest in said movie. Dangle that carrot to get that money. That will never change. The business is built on money. Most societies are built on money. We live in a capitalistic society. Movies cater to that. But a little bit of stunt casting doesn’t mean you can’t have a good time. What else would you be looking for in a movie, if not a good time?

Let’s end this off with a few notes:

• I mentioned a few movies in this post that were part of Sunday “Bad” Movies. Gymkata, Cool as Ice, Showdown, Grumpy Cat’s Worst Christmas Ever, and Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation. Oh, and the Sharknado franchise, which has been looked at twice.
• There were no actors in #AMFAD: All My Friends Are Dead from other Sunday “Bad” Movies.
• Have you seen #AMFAD: All My Friends Are Dead? What did you think? What do you think of stunt casting? Let me know your thoughts in the comments, or find me on Bluesky or Threads.
• Bluesky, Threads, and the comments are good places to suggest movies for me to watch for future posts. Hit me up. Let me know what I should be seeing.
• Now we’ve got a look forward. This month got away from me with a new job and some short film work, so my two planned horror posts were pushed back. This one will be out this week. Hopefully the Slashlorette Party post comes out next week. Then I’ve got a post planned for the Smokey and the Bandit made-for-TV movies that came out in the early 90s. That’ll be fun. I’ll see you soon for another post.

The OctoGames (2022)

We live in a world where the equipment to make a passable movie is easily available. It’s not hard to get enough money for a decent camera, a couple lights, and a microphone or two. I’ve been able to make short films with that much before. Anyone can get their hands on equipment if they want to bring one of their ideas to the screen for others to see.

The problem comes when these same creators try to come up with their ideas. Some people aren’t as creative as others. Look back through the Sunday “Bad” Movies history and you’ll see numerous movies that were mockbusters, rip-offs, and retellings of the same story. Metal Man was a riff on Iron Man. Chop Kick Panda was a mockbuster of Kung Fu Panda. Showdown was a retelling of the story made famous by The Karate Kid.

I’m always of the stance that originality comes from how a story is told, rather than the story itself. I’ve mentioned that in almost every recent post. There are times, however, when so many movies go in on one subject at the same time and don’t do enough new with it that I get kind of annoyed. The slashers based on public domain characters are getting a little out of hand. As are the Squid Game riffs, one of which I’m going to be going over.

Here's the issue. I wouldn’t have such a problem with the Squid Game riffs if they were taking the story concept and running with it. A bunch of people are put in a situation where if they lose, they die. One person survives and wins. That concept has been around in different forms for years. Battle Royale, The Hunger Games, Squid Game, Death Tube, and The Long Walk all used that basic story concept in different ways. The OctoGames, the Squid Game riff this post is about, stuck way too close to Squid Game. Instead of being a riff on the material, it felt like a cheap recreation.

JaxPro (Brad Belemjian) was a popular YouTuber and streamer looking to retire from the business. His last big series was going to be a competition. Eight up-and-coming influencers would compete in a series of children’s games where the losers would be eliminated in deadly fashion. Once the contestants found out they would be killed if they lost, some of them wanted out. The other greedy ones wanted to make sure that didn’t happen.

Nearly every story beat in The OctoGames felt like it was pulled straight from Squid Game. On the surface, there were the childhood games and people getting killed. That was the very basic premise of both Squid Game and The OctoGames. There was also the name. One involved squid, a sea creature with ten tentacles. The other went with octo, as in octopus, a sea creature with eight tentacles. The very basic stuff was practically the same, with enough changes that it wouldn’t be considered plagiarism.

The characters were also very much the same between Squid Game and The OctoGames. The main character in each was someone who got into the competition for their own benefit, immediately saw people get killed, and tried to band everyone together to stop the games. There was the super selfish person who would do whatever it took to be the last one standing, even if it involved straight up murdering people. There was the woman who flirted with every possible person to try and gain an advantage, and the older guy who played both sides so he could join whoever had more power. These were character types that, sure, weren’t all that original to Squid Game, but were surely lifted directly from the popular Netflix show for this lower budgeted knock-off.

Other than the clear similarities, the lower budgetedness of The OctoGames really showed through how they tried to recapture some of the Squid Game elements on a much lower scale. One of the big sets in Squid Game was the bedroom where the players were housed between games. Three walls were lined with towers of bunk beds that people would have to climb up to. The OctoGames had eight sleeping bags in a garage. Every set within Squid Game was expertly designed with some sort of theme to it. Some sort of large scope to it. The OctoGames had a hide-and-seek game that really only took place in two small rooms of a house. One of the games in The OctoGames was an obstacle course, which could go any number of imaginative ways, even on a lower budget. They opted for a party inflatable, which was laughable. Every game felt like the least amount of effort was put into it.

As much as I’ve spent this post going through everything that made The OctoGames feel like the cheap knock-off it was, there was one thing it added to the story that made it at least the slightest bit interesting. The whole competition was put on by JaxPro, a popular streamer who wanted to upload videos of it to his YouTube channel before retiring from the platform. Everyone who was chosen to compete in his games was an aspiring influencer who joined for the chance of JaxPro promoting them. The OctoGames was a commentary on the great lengths that influencers will go to for fame and fortune. It was interesting enough commentary for a movie that didn’t try on any other level.

That said, the commentary was still derivative of other, more popular and recognized movies. Scre4m had commented on streaming and fame a decade earlier. The way the killer recorded their murders. The motive behind the deaths. It all came back to fame and fortune. Spree, which came out two years before The OctoGames, followed a budding YouTuber who went on a killing spree after snapping from his lack of success. Each of these movies were about the horrible things people would do to become famous. Each of these movies covered that theme before The OctoGames. So, even the one thing that made The OctoGames feel different than the show it was riffing on wasn’t anything that hadn’t been used in other movies before.

The commentary on influencers wasn’t enough to really set The OctoGames apart from Squid Game. It was essentially just a way to pull the characters into the situation. Once they were in, it played out very much the same way as the show it pulled from. Children’s game after children’s game. Death after death. The characters wanting to be influencers fell to the wayside, even for the ones who wanted to keep playing. It became about the prize money, instead. The same prize money that Squid Game held as a carrot in front of the rabbits playing. It was a different motivation to get them invested, with the same end result.

I’ve defended many movies and their originality as being the way the stories were told rather than the story itself. The problem with The OctoGames was that it was so reliant on Squid Game as a story source that it never fully lived on its own. It didn’t do enough to take an unoriginal premise and spin it in an original way. Squid Game managed to take what The Hunger Games, Battle Royale, and The Long Walk had done and give a unique telling of that concept. The OctoGames didn’t.

The availability of filmmaking equipment has led to some interesting projects. There were some kids in the 1980s who remade Indiana Jones shot for shot. There was a remake of Toy Story in live action, where someone used a bunch of actual toys. These were at least interesting in that they were passion projects. They felt like people doing something because of their love of the source. They got a pass on not bringing anything new to the table.

When someone gets access to filmmaking equipment and uses it to rip-off something at a lower cost for a quick buck without that love… That’s where I have a problem. That’s where I think The OctoGames fell, and that’s why I’m so down on it. Was it watchable? Sure. But that doesn’t mean it came from the right place. It didn’t feel original, and there was no love in the reproduction. That made it a bad movie.

I’m going to toss some notes in here and head out:

• I mentioned a few movies I’ve covered in this post. They were Metal Man, Chop Kick Panda, Showdown, and Death Tube.
• There was nobody in The OctoGames who was previously featured in Sunday “Bad” Movies.
• Have you seen The OctoGames? What did you think? Let me know your thoughts in the comments, on Bluesky, or on Threads.
• You can use Threads, Bluesky, or the comments to let me know about movies I should check out for future Sunday “Bad” Movies posts.
• Let’s take a look at what’s coming up in future posts. The next post will be about a little movie called #AMFAD: All My Friends Are Dead. I couldn’t help myself. When I saw it had Jojo Siwa, I knew it would be perfect. Then I’ve got Slashlorette Party. Yeah, we’re right into horror now. Anyway, I’ll see you soon for #AMFAD: All My Friends Are Dead.

War of the Worlds (2025)

Summer 2025 was a big one for movies. The rebooted DC Universe hit the big screens for the first time with Superman. The Tom Cruise era of Mission: Impossible movies seemingly came to a close. College-aged dudes went crazy for The Minecraft Movie, while new life was breathed into the Final Destination franchise. Yet there’s one movie that is arguably getting more attention than all of them.

This might be a little bit of recency bias, since the movie came out on July 31^st and we’re midway through August as I’m writing this sentence. War of the Worlds dropped on Prime Video to no fanfare. I don’t remember any marketing, whatsoever. Word of mouth, however, worked better than marketing ever could have. People started talking about it immediately. It was heralded as one of the worst movies ever made. Everyone who subsequently watched it said they hadn’t expected it to be as bad as the quick reputation was, and then it was worse. As one of the resident bad movie people on the internet, and one who tends to be more forgiving than most, I thought I should give it a fair shake.

War of the Worlds was a modern screen-life adaptation of the H.G. Wells science fiction story from the 1890s. Will Radford (Ice Cube) was the best computer analyst that Homeland Security had. While locked in their headquarters tracking down a high-priority, high-threat hacker, Will watched on as the world was invaded by alien tripods. Will used his surveillance methods and his connections on the outside to save his family and the world.

I’m not going to lie and say that War of the Worlds was a good movie. One, I wouldn’t lie about something like that, and two, it was bad. Do I think it was as bad as people have said? No. They’ve overblown how bad it is for sure. People haven’t seen enough bad movies if they think that War of the Worlds is one of the worst.

There were a couple good things in War of the Worlds. I could see the potential. I’m going to save the good for closer to the end. People are probably here for the negativity, and I’ll give them some of that first. Just know that my negativity doesn’t come from a place of hate or wanting to pile it on like everyone else has been doing. It comes from a place of seeing that potential that it never fully lived up to.

Let’s kick things off with the worst part of War of the Worlds. This is the one thing that was never going to work, solely because of the execution. About 75% of the movie was a compilation of stock footage repurposed for the action of an alien invasion. It felt like a series of clips, five to ten seconds in length, strung together to make it look like news footage that Will watched while the invasion unfolded outside his walls. The movie was shot during the height of Covid and was confined to a computer screen. They had to figure out the action somehow. This wasn’t the way. The few clips of other characters running around conveyed the situation much better than the stock footage of a soldier speaking to the press with his face blurred out. 

Think of it like this. How many movies since, let’s say, the late 1990s have used home videos or phone footage, or even found footage style, to show action? I recall Signs, where one of the most chilling moments was home video footage of a birthday party where the alien walked out from behind a hedge that was shown in a news broadcast. There’s a way to make something like that work, then have the main character react to it. Obvious stock footage being repurposed was not the way to go about it.

That brings me to the real issue. War of the Worlds was a Covid restrictions movie. Think back five years. Around here, lockdowns were on and off. Most places had theaters closed. A lot of non-essential jobs were either put on hold or work from home. People were starved for content. When movies and TV started production again, there were heavy restrictions. Limited cast and crew. The dreaded term “social distancing.” That sort of stuff. War of the Worlds started production during all that, in 2020. That’s part of the reason why they went the screen-life route. That’s why the actors were rarely together, if they ever shared the screen at all. That’s why there weren’t any big action scenes, and stock footage was used. Could they have done some other stuff during the five years the movie sat on the shelf? Sure. But it’s working for their algorithm as is.

Now we're onto point number two. The acting. War of the Worlds was a confusing movie when it came to the performances. Everybody did both terrible and the best they could do. The Covid protocols meant that they likely weren’t acting opposite anyone. It certainly felt that way. Nobody seemed to be in a real conversation. Nothing was natural. At the same time, they were all spewing off exposition in a way that wasn’t boring. So it was a somewhat entertaining unnatural mess.

I want to specifically point out three moments that just kind of stuck with me. First, Will’s disappointed dad faces made me laugh. If Ice Cube did one good thing with his performance, it was his facial expression work. Second, Will’s daughter, Faith (Iman Benson), was injured partway through the invasion. Iman Benson easily gave the best performance in the movie as her character struggled with blood loss. Finally, her boyfriend, Mark (Devon Bostick), was the least invested of any actor. At least, it felt that way. This was especially apparent in a scene where he facetimed Will while driving. That brings me to the third thing that people talked about while describing how bad War of the Worlds was.

Remember what I said about the release of War of the Worlds? It popped up on Prime Video on July 31^st of 2025. It was mostly made in 2020. What do these two aspects of the movie have in common? When people were being quarantined during the height of the pandemic, they weren’t out shopping. They were in shopping. They shopped online. The biggest online retailer was Amazon. Is Amazon. It never stopped being Amazon. Prime Video is Amazon’s streaming service. The third thing that got people talking about War of the Worlds was how Amazon inserted themselves into their own movie.

When I said Mark spent some time driving around, it was because he drove an Amazon delivery van. That would probably be fine for most people. Oh, look, Amazon put themselves in the movie as product placement. Things got a little more involved than that. Mark patched Faith up with a tape gun from the van. That might have pushed a few people over the edge. It was a ludicrous way to make the Amazon driver a little more heroic because of his work. However, that was nothing compared to what the climax would bring.

Spoilers coming up. There’s no way to hammer home how propaganda-like the self-serving product placement was in the climax without spoiling the climax of War of the Worlds. Alright, now that you’ve been warned… The alien tripods came to Earth to mine data. Will needed to corrupt the data with a virus, but he didn’t have a USB stick to insert into the servers in his building. Mark ran through how to order a USB stick on Amazon. For some reason, he had a USB stick to sell to Will on the spot. He also had an Amazon drone for express shipping. I don’t know why a van driver had stock and a drone. I’m not done yet, either. At one point, the drone was knocked down and was like a turtle stuck on its shell. The good guys hacked into some onlooker’s phone to ask him to flip the drone back over. He would only agree with a bribe. They gave him a $1000 Amazon e-gift card. Then they were back on their way to save the day. Basically, the world would have been doomed without Amazon’s delivery services. I completely understand how people were turned off by that. My brain was powered off by that point, so it didn’t really affect me.

I will say that the drone sequence was my favourite part of War of the Worlds. Remove Amazon from the equation. Think of it solely as a scene where someone outside the danger zone had to get something to someone within it. This was the only time in the movie where there was kinetic action shot specifically for the movie. It wasn’t stock footage. It wasn’t a stationary webcam or a closeup of someone’s face through their phone. There was a drone flying to and through an office building while Will ran from floor to floor past security cameras. For this one scene, product placement aside, it felt like a real movie.

It looks like I went with a mixture of negative and positive, rather than the negative then positive that I thought I’d be doing. I turned some of the negativity into positivity. It’s like being stuck in a blender, then saving lives. In the end, War of the Worlds was still a bad movie. Some good facial expressions, a good performance, and one good action scene didn’t make up for the fact that it was an hour and a half of stock footage and Amazon advertising. The positives kept it from being true bottom of the barrel stuff, though. I’ve seen much worse, no redeeming qualities movies.

July 31^st, 2025 was a day that changed the movie landscape for at least the rest of the year. It saw the release of War of the Worlds, one of the most talked about movies. People said it was one of the worst movies of all time. They had legitimate reasons to believe that. I don’t necessarily agree with that stance, though I agree it was very bad. The thing is, it will be one of the cinematic talking points of 2025 going forward. It will be in the conversation of important cultural cinema touchstones of 2025, alongside movies like KPop Demon Hunters, F1, Weapons, and Sinners. War of the Worlds will stand the test of time for how it doesn’t stand the test of time. That’s something.

Something else is this notes section:

• War of the Worlds starred Ice Cube, who was also been Torque and Anaconda.
• Another three-time Sunday “Bad” Movies performer was Jim Meskimen, who was in Jingle All the Way, Battlefield Earth, and War of the Worlds.
• Eva Longoria returned to Sunday “Bad” Movies in War of the Worlds. She was previously seen in Foodfight!
• War of the Worlds brought back Devon Bostick, who was previously seen in Dead Before Dawn 3D.
• Finally, Harvey B. Jackson was in both 2 Lava 2 Lantuala and War of the Worlds.
• Have you seen War of the Worlds? What were your thoughts? Let me know in the comments, on Bluesky, or on Threads.
• If there’s a movie you would like to see me cover for Sunday “Bad” Movies, you can use the comments, Bluesky, or Threads to let me know what movie it is.
• And now we get into the spooky season movies. War of the Worlds was already fringe horror, but let’s kick things into full gear. I’ve got a few movies lined up already. I’m already writing one of the posts. The next post will be for The OctoGames. Following that, we’ve got a little movie called #AMFAD: All My Friends Are Dead. Then I’ll be taking a look at Slashlorette Party. I have a few more movies I want to get to, but that will depend on how much time I have. You never know what might come up. I’ll see you soon for The OctoGames.

Teen Witch (1989)

As someone who watches a lot of movies with questionable quality, I can tell you that there are highs and lows. No two highs are the same. No two lows are the same. But the mixture of them builds an entire landscape. The peaks and the valleys. Those bad movies that are enjoyable, and the others that feel like a chore to get through.

Over time, I’ve categorized movies into four different zones. There are the good-good movies. These movies look and feel professionally made, even if they were low budget and independent. Essentially, they are well done technically and emotionally. The bad-good movies were well done technically, but fumbled the stuff that would make a movie enjoyable. Good-bad were the opposite, where the technical side wasn’t particularly well done, yet the entertainment was up there. I don’t necessarily believe in so bad it’s good, but this would be the closest to that. Or something that’s poorly made and filled with heart could fit here. Then there are the bad-bad movies that were poorly done all around. The deepest valleys.

My goal in this post is to figure out where Teen Witch fits into this landscape. Is it a peak or a valley? Louise (Robyn Lively) was a fifteen-year-old girl who was basically an outcast at school. She skipped a grade and wasn’t seen as a peer by her classmates. When she turned sixteen, she discovered she had magic powers. Louise used this magic to gain popularity and love, before tossing the powers aside because Brad (Dan Gauthier) should love her for her, not because of a spell.

On the surface, Teen Witch was your basic coming-of-age story. With magic. It was reminiscent of a girl’s version of Teen Wolf. That makes sense. From what I found, it was originally intended to be a spin-off of the 1980s Teen Wolf before becoming its own thing. The structure of the story didn’t scream anything but decent.

The production value backed that up. The lighting was good, particularly in the dance dream sequence that opened the movie. The locations and sets were all good quality with solid set dressing and design. The costuming and hairstyling and makeup were all good. The foundation was laid for a solid little movie. Maybe it was a little underbudgeted, which showed through the cast, but otherwise, it seemed like everything was there for something solid. And you kind of got it, but quality is a funny thing.

You see, my mind and heart tell me that Teen Witch should go firmly into the Good-Bad category. Based on my definition, that means that the technical stuff was bad. I just told you there weren’t any major flaws with Teen Witch. But did I? I said that it looked fine. I said it had a good framework with the coming-of-age story. What didn’t I say? What did I leave out that kept everything from coming together? You’ll have to read between the lines a little bit to notice the glaring gap in what I wrote. The one piece on the technical side of things that brought the whole house of cards down. The story concept was fine. It was the details in Teen Witch’s script that took the movie off the rails. In a good way, though. It was entertainingly bonkers.

This might start sounding like a fever dream. I’m telling you that now. I’m going to get into the specific moments of the movie that felt a little… off. There’s no real order to these bits. I’m going to start with Louise’s brother, who showed up immediately after Louise woke from the opening dance dream. Richie (Joshua Miller) was introduced to audiences while solo eating a giant chocolate cake under Louise’s bed. In a later scene, their parents were out, and he made a disaster of food in the kitchen. This character was all about food. Richie and Lousie argued in the disastrous kitchen before she turned him into a dog while he repeatedly called her a dog. That was followed by the weirdest voicework I’ve heard for a dog in a long time. The last Richie thing I want to mention is when he popped up to serve Louise, then brought her a school assignment that he ironed for her. Yes, he freshly ironed her homework. Weird kid, that Richie.

Next up, Louise’s dating stories. There are two of them that I want to make note of. The first came when she hadn’t yet found popularity and was only starting to realize her powers. She got paired up with an obnoxious nerd type for the high school dance. All he talked about was wanting to get up in her while his voice was somewhere between Shaggy from Scooby-Doo and Lewis from Revenge of the Nerds. After one too many advances, Louise told him to leave her alone and he straight up vanished from the car he was driving. Louise needed to quick think to make sure she didn’t die in the car.

The other bit of dating life wasn’t quite as magical. Louise brought Brad over to study. She was going to cast a love spell on him but chickened out. No magic was actually used. There was a little bit of manipulation, though. Louise wanted Brad to sit on the bed with her, so she hid all the chairs away in her closet. Everyone kept coming into her room to ask where the chairs were and she kept having to think of new excuses. It was another odd scene among all the odd scenes that made up Teen Witch.

You may be asking how Louise knew about the love spell that she wanted to cast on Brad. Well, she had a mentor. Zelda Rubinstein played Madame Serena Alcott, a witch who knew Louise from a previous life in Salem. She taught Louise how to harness her power, but also wanted to use Louise’s power for her own gain. Namely, she wanted to spruce up her house and turn her frog into a man she could bed down with. It’s not beastiality if the animal is a human now, right? In the end, Louise realized she didn’t want to be as superficial as her mentor and decided not to use her magic that way. She would be herself and not influence anyone.

Being herself led to strange things, though. Earlier in the movie, all the popular girls harassed her by doing a choreographed dance number to a song called “I Like Boys” in the locker room at school. It wasn’t a musical number because there was no singing. Just dancing. It felt like a music video had been inserted into the movie without any real thought. I wasn’t entirely sure why it was happening in that moment. I’m still not sure.

Louise’s teacher harassed her even more than her peers. He read her diary aloud to the class. He dug through her purse and showed everyone her belongings, including her birth control. The guy was a huge asshole. Until Louise humbled him, that is. She made a giant voodoo doll and used it to make him strip in front of the class. Yeah, there were some moments that felt ripped right out of an 80s sex comedy. The voodoo doll came up again when it fell down the stairs and the teacher then fell down a set of stairs. It made one more appearance when Louise’s mom threw it into the washer. The teacher followed suit by walking into a car wash. What a guy. What a punishment.

I almost forgot to mention the rap battle involving the song “Top That” and Louise’s best friend, Polly (Mandy Ingber). Louise didn’t only use her magic on herself. Polly had a crush on the leader of a three-white-man rap clique. These three guys would be standing in a corner anywhere, just rapping away. They rapped at Louise on her first day of school at the lockers. This scene had them rapping in the middle of the street, next to a parked car. Polly mentioned liking the guy. Louise used her spell to make Polly into a rap genius who went and duetted with the guy before getting on her bike and riding away. I don’t know if the two ever actually got together, but they had a memorable rap scene that anyone who has seen Teen Witch will talk about.

Teen Witch was filled with a whole bunch of insanity. The foundation of the story was a solid one. It was built as a coming-of-age story where the teenager had magical powers. The intentions were good. However, the road to Hell was paved with good intentions. There was a sex comedy style of writing that created a bunch of insane scenes and moments. It brought down the quality of the script. The technical side of Teen Witch wasn’t as good as initially thought. Everything was serviceable, but the script was bad. It was a bad movie, thanks to the writing.

I would still argue for the good-bad classification, though. The insanity may have brought down the quality of the script, but it made the overall movie much more entertaining and memorable. Based on the definition I gave off the top, that’s the correct category. The technical were good in moments and bad in moments. Nothing blew it out of the water. It was entertaining the whole way though. That’s some underwhelming technical and great entertainment. In the landscape of bad movies, it’s a peak. Not as high as Everest, but a peak all the same.

I’ve watched a lot of bad movies in my time, especially while writing this blog. I’ve come up with four categories that encapsulate 99.99% of the film landscape. I don’t know why I did this. I don’t know when I did this. All I know is that this is how my mind works, and this blog is my way to share my thoughts with you. The few people who actually read this. Thank you.

I’m going to leave you with some notes to finish things off here:

• Teen Witch featured Darcy DeMoss, who was previously featured in Sharknado 3: Oh Hell No! and Hardbodies.
• Not to be outdone, another three-timer was Jimmy Keegan, who was in Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo, Over the Top, and Teen Witch.
• Then there was the other Jimmy. Jimmy Locust was in Teen Witch, Killer Klowns from Outer Space, and She’s Out of Control.
• Two other actors from She’s Out of Control were in Teen Witch. They were Megan Gallivan and Gary Schwartz.
• Teen Witch featured Tina Caspary from Mac and Me.
• Rita Wilson made a small appearance in Teen Witch. You might remember her for her larger role in Jingle All the Way.
• Dan Gauthier played Dan in Teen Witch. He also popped up in Son in Law.
• Teen Witch saw the return of Brett Baxter Clark to Sunday “Bad” Movies, following a first appearance in Malibu Express.
• Blood Diner and Teen Witch both featured Jared Chandler.
• Finally, Zelda Rubinstein was maybe the most recognizable actor in Teen Witch. She was also in Southland Tales.
• Have you seen Teen Witch? What did you think of it? Let me know your thoughts in the comments. If you don’t want to put them there, you can always find me on Threads or Bluesky as well.
• You can use the comments, Threads, or Bluesky to let me know what movies I should be checking out for Sunday “Bad” Movies. I’m always open to suggestions.
• The final thing to do is give you guys a heads up for what’s coming soon to a Sunday “Bad” Movies blog near you. I’ve got two movies lined up. The first one is a little movie called War of the Worlds. You know, the one from last month. The one that everyone already says is one of the worst movies ever. That one. After that, I’ve got a little movie called The Octagames. Clearly a play on Squid Game. Yeah, I’ll be getting into the horror with that one. We’re close enough to spooky season and I never know when these posts will be up, so that’ll be the start of horror for a bit here. Or Halloween-ish stuff. Who knows if it will all be horror? Anyway, see you next time for War of the Worlds.

God's Not Dead: In God We Trust (2024) and the Franchise's Different Christian Persecution Storylines

I started writing Sunday “Bad” Movies posts in December 2012. That’s nearly thirteen years ago. Over that time, I’ve seen a myriad of bad movies, as well as some surprisingly good ones. I’ve watched one-offs and I’ve seen franchises. I’ve followed some actors through their bad movie careers, while there are some I still need to touch upon. It’s all in the name of learning about film in general.

One of the more enduring staples of Sunday “Bad” Movies has been the God’s Not Dead franchise. It took me a while to get into it. Over 200 posts, in fact. But once I was in, the franchise kept coming back. I was four and a half years into Sunday “Bad” Movies when I watched the first two. I watched each subsequent sequel as they were released. I guess you could say that’s my thing. I even ventured outside the franchise to check out Brother White, another religious movie featuring David A.R. White. Then I got around to what may have been his origin, Second Glance. There’s something about that man’s movie charisma that keeps pulling me back in.

The God’s Not Dead franchise are your stereotypical Christian propaganda movies. They don’t dive into historical Christian dramatizations. They aren’t that sort of story. God’s Not Dead and its four sequels are that type of Christian movie where people tell Christians they’re not allowed to believe in God. Yeah, this franchise is all about the persecution complex that flows through the entire Christian film genre. It might be the best at it, too. Sure, there are some missteps in each of the movies. Some things that might come down to ideologies being different. But they do a good job of coming up with interesting conflicts.

I’m honestly a little surprised that they managed to tell a different story within the confines of Christian persecution in each instalment. I’m even more surprised they managed to bring something interesting each time, too. I’m not going to outright say the movies are good. The persecution of Christians has never, in modern society, been as bad as the movies make it out to be. Or as miraculous.

God’s Not Dead began as a simple story that could have worked well outside the Christian audience if it were tweaked just slightly. And if all the surrounding “cancer cured by prayer” and “Christianity is better than Islam” stuff was removed. At its core, the first movie was about a philosophy professor telling his students that they could no longer believe in God, and the one student who refused to conform to this demand. Had the story positioned itself as a conflict about the freedom to believe, it would have been a perfect, captivating story. It didn’t do that. 

God’s Not Dead saw the student guest lecturing for three classes in a debate with the professor. These lectures should have been about the aforementioned freedom of belief. Allow people to believe in whatever they chose. That would have been a universal theme that could have garnered a bigger audience. It wouldn’t be a Christian movie, though. The Christian filmmakers had to position themselves as the sole victim. The student argued about why God was real, essentially turning his trilogy of lectures into sermons to convert his classmates. The basis was there for a strong story about a teacher infringing upon people’s rights, but the Christian part of the Christian persecution complex brought it down.

God’s Not Dead 2 might have had the strongest conflict of the entire franchise. There were still some flaws as the inherently Christian story was pushed too far into the persecution side of things. A high school teacher was in court because of a classroom incident. A student who was exploring her religious beliefs asked the teacher about a comparison between a historical event and a Biblical event. The teacher answered the question with the relation between the events. Another student reported it and BOOM! A court case was opened because the teacher didn’t respect the boundaries within the separation of church and state.

The thing that held God’s Not Dead 2 back was how hard they hit the Christian persecution angle. The movie would have been fine as a court case involving the use of religion in a public school lesson, even though the teacher was just answering a question her student had. They took it a few steps further, though. The opposing lawyer had to declare he was using the case to “prove once and for all that God is dead.” He demanded they prove the Bible was historically accurate. They weren’t going after the teacher for her lesson as much as they were going after Christianity for existing.

Another storyline in God’s Not Dead 2 was that the government wanted Pastor Dave to turn over his sermons. He refused to share them, which led to his arrest at the conclusion of the film. I don’t know how accurate that is to reality, but it only helped to reinforce the persecution of Christians. It also led into the opening of the third God’s Not Dead movie.

God’s Not Dead: A Light in Darkness may not have had the strongest conflict, but it put an interesting spin on the Christian persecution stuff that permeated throughout the franchise. It made the third God’s Not Dead movie the most palatable. Pastor Dave was released from prison in time to see his campus church be vandalized. An angry student threw a brick through a window and started a fire. This coincided with the college’s decision to remove the church from campus grounds. Pastor Dave hired his lawyer brother to help him fight the school so he could keep the church.

There was a self-awareness to God’s Not Dead: A Light in Darkness that wasn’t present in the rest of the franchise. Yeah, it was still a movie about a pastor fighting against a college that wanted to remove Christianity from their campus. That Christian persecution complex was still there. The self-awareness made it feel different, though. It ended up not being a story about stopping belief. The lesson was about people having an equal opportunity to find faith, rather than have one faith pushed upon them. Pastor Dave was in the wrong for most of the movie. They never shied away from that fact. He even assaulted the vandal. He was not a heroic figure in this story, which made things more interesting. God’s Not Dead: A Light in Darkness was interesting because Pastor Dave learned that all faiths deserve to have followers, and his followers would come to Christianity no matter where his church was. It was humbling, in a way, to the Christian persecution complex that plagued the series.

Three movies. Three different ways that people tried to keep Christians from worshipping God. Or so the Christian audience would have you believe. Surely, the people behind the franchise would run into some repetition if they kept going. Not so fast. God’s Not Dead: We the People took the fight to congress. Pastor Dave led a bunch of church-sanctioned homeschooling. When a federal representative deemed their curriculum not up to governmental standards, he headed to Washington to fight the government in the capitol for their rights to homeschool their way.

If I remember correctly, a lot of the conflict was based on the whole science versus religion argument. Evolution and that sort of stuff. God’s Not Dead: We the People felt like the most fabricated conflict for the sake of Christian persecution. Each of these movies pulled from real stories, exaggerating them to pull on the persecution complex strings to their fullest extent. There are real stories of students being told they can’t be religious at school, or teachers getting in trouble for talking about religion. Colleges are moving away from having only one religion on campus due to inclusivity. These things are happening, though not to the extremes that these movies made them out to be. There has not, however, been a targeted governmental assault on religion in homeschooling. Between that wholly fabricated story and this instalment being kind of boring, it was time for a change.

That change would come in the form of God’s Not Dead: In God We Trust. The fifth film in the franchise would move away from the education thread that flowed through the first four movies, and dive fully into politics. Pastor Dave (David A.R. White) was enlisted to run in an election against Peter Kane (Ray Wise). Kane wanted to do all the right things. Tax churches, allow universal healthcare, make sure laws weren’t written in the name of God. But he went about it through mudslinging and manipulation. Pastor Dave, on the other hand, wanted to get elected to help his church, and he wouldn’t compromise his beliefs or his friendliness to do it. He thought honesty and openness was the best path. As much as his campaign manager wanted to tone down his religious side, it was a part of him. His honesty and openness required all of him. People would elect the real him, not a fabricated image of himself that hid key parts of who he was. And he wasn’t going to say anything bad about his opponent.

God’s Not Dead: In God We Trust changed things up in two major ways. First, it dropped the education thread that had been the backbone of every conflict in the series thus far. The other major change was that it didn’t attempt to play the story off as true. Sure, it somewhat satirized how broken the US political system is, and that things need to change. But it wasn’t some real story about how someone’s religious beliefs were being infringed upon. Outside of the bookend storyline about a church shelter that was being shut down. God’s Not Dead: In God We Trust mostly eschewed the Christian persecution complex and the education system for an election campaign storyline with a religious character. I guess, five movies in, the Christian persecution complex finally felt a little too tired to be the main focus of another movie.

The God’s Not Dead franchise has been going for over a decade. Five movies in eleven years. It is a franchise that has thrived off the Christian persecution complex. That hooked the audience the first time around. The Christian audience wanted to be the underdog fighting against the people putting them down. Somehow, the franchise kept finding new fights to be fought, mostly by the same pastor from the same Arkansas church. The fact that they’ve kept the franchise going as long as they have is a (new) testament to the Christian audiences’ appetites to watch movies where they can vicariously fight back against the anti-Christian forces that be. I’m curious how long it will be until they run out of causes for Pastor Dave to fight for.

I’ve been writing Sunday “Bad” Movies posts since 2012. There are only a few movies and franchises that have stuck with me then way God’s Not Dead has. It’s not that they’re great movies. There might only be two of them that I legitimately enjoy. And I don’t agree with the Christian persecution complex. Yet there’s something about them that has a grip on me. The conflicts have potential. David A.R. White has been a good presence as Pastor Dave. If they keep finding reasons to play victim, I’ll keep watching.

The last thing to do with this post is the notes:

• I mentioned God’s Not Dead, God’s Not Dead 2, God’s Not Dead: A Light in Darkness, and God’s Not Dead: We the People in this post. I also mentioned Brother White and Second Glance. They all featured David A.R. White, who made his seventh Sunday “Bad” Movies appearance in God’s Not Dead: In God We Trust.
• Vance Null was one of the directors on God’s Not Dead: In God We Trust. He also directed God’s Not Dead: We the People.
• I would like to take a moment to welcome Ray Wise into the Sunday “Bad” Movies five-timers’ club. His five movies were Big Ass Spider!, God’s Not Dead 2, Brother White, Atlas Shrugged: Part II, and God’s Not Dead: In God We Trust.
• Dean Cain returned to Sunday “Bad” Movies in God’s Not Dead: In God We Trust. He was previously featured in A Nanny for Christmas, God’s Not Dead, and Futuresport.
• Duncan Phillips and Michael Tait have been in the same four movies. They were in God’s Not Dead, God’s Not Dead 2, God’s Not Dead: A Light in Darkness, and God’s Not Dead: In God We Trust.
• Brad Heller showed up in God’s Not Dead: A Light in Darkness. He was also in God’s Not Dead 2 and Brother White.
• Scott Baio returned to Sunday “Bad” Movies with God’s Not Dead: In God We Trust. He had already been in Superbabies: Baby Geniuses 2 and Zapped!
• God’s Not Dead: In God We Trust featured Isaiah Washington following up his role in God’s Not Dead: We the People. He was also in Exit Wounds.
• God’s Not Dead: We the People and God’s Not Dead: In God We Trust each featured Vincent De Paul, who was also in Sex and the City 2.
• God’s Not Dead, God’s Not Dead 2, and God’s Not Dead: In God We Trust each featured Tommy Blaze, Jody Davis, and Jeff Frankenstein.
• Mike Huckabee was in God’s Not Dead 2 and God’s Not Dead: In God We Trust.
• God’s Not Dead: A Light in Darkness and God’s Not Dead: In God We Trust each featured Segun Oduolowu.
• Finally, God’s Not Dead: In God We Trust had Kevin Downes return from God’s Not Dead: We the People.
• Have you seen God’s Not Dead: In God We Trust? Have you seen any of the movies? What are your thoughts on the franchise? You can share your thoughts in the comments, or find me on Bluesky or Threads.
• You can also drop any suggestions for movies to watch for future Sunday “Bad” Movies posts in the comments, on Bluesky, or on Threads.
• Let’s end things off with a little look to the future. I’ve got the next two movies picked out already. One was Teen Witch, which I had watched while finishing up the previous Sunday “Bad” Movies post. Another movie kind of fell in my lap. It’s a new movie that everyone has been talking about because of how accessible it is and how bad it is. Yeah, the brand-new War of the Worlds movie is coming up. I’ll see you soon for both of those.