Streaming on Tubi and on the BAD BEN website here!

BAD BEN (2016)

Directed and written by Nigel Bach.
Starring Nigel Bach
Find out more about this film here!

Every time I visit Tubi, it seems a million and one of my options are from the ongoing found footage series of films called BAD BEN. So I decided to bite the bullet and check out this series. So every week for the foreseeable future will look at a different movie in the BAD BEN series.

In the first BAD BEN movie, a guy named Tom Riley (writer/director Nigel Bach) purchases a home from a police auction in hopes to flip it for a big profit. Arriving at the home, Tom sees that the home is in good condition and fully furnished as if the occupants picked up and left overnight. Tom activates the offline security system and captures escalating paranormal phenomenon in and around the house—all pointing back to a something awful in a locked room in the basement.

OK, I’m a big fan of DIY horror. Seeing aspiring filmmakers pull up their bootstraps and make a movie without a lot of technical knowledge, experience, or even money to do it is appealing to me because I know they are making these movies for the absolute love of the genre. But I’m also a realist. It’s pretty easy to make a found footage film of this kind. So while I admire the sheer gumption Nigel Bach shows in making not only this film, but a seemingly endless series of sequels to it, I don’t want to heap the praise on it either because this is the epitome of bare bones filmmaking.

Basically, BAD BEN is a series of security can footage and handheld phone camera footage of your dad pittering around the house, assessing damages and fixing things, and walking around in the night in his boxers. Bach is the only actor in this movie, so if following around a middle-aged bald man griping on the phone and attempting to track down strange noises sounds like a drag to you, you’re going to want to skip BAD BEN.

But I’m not going to do that. Yes, this film ends with the most cliched found footage trope since the up-nose confessional, but I’m honestly curious as to where this series is going to go. If BAD BEN does anything right, it has laid the groundwork for a lot of weird happenings occurring in and around the house. There are baby graves, locked up knives, secret rooms, pentagrams in the attic, and shadows lurking outside. It may not be reinventing the found footage wheel, but I didn’t hate the time I spent with the first BAD BEN. Next week, we look at BAD BEN: STEELMANVILLE ROAD. The first sequel of the series. Wish me luck!
Check out the trailer here!!