If the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree…make sure no one approaches you with a cucumber…
Some straight people are set in their ways when it comes to the roles that gay people play. In a gay relationship one man will be assigned “the man” and the other will be relegated as “the woman,” and don’t get them started on the behaviors of how some gay parents raise their children. Niceties falls away in Chisa Hutchinson’s pitch-black thriller like apples thunking down on a forest floor, and Bad Dad is cunningly original.
Jason Babinsky’s Warren is unpacking his house on a hot summer day while his son, KJ, plays somewhere on his bike outside. He gabs on the phone with a friend that he’s glad to be out of his marriage and certainly happy that he’s no longer living in Brooklyn anymore. A little peace and quiet away from the big city will reset his ailing mind. A knock on his front door from the smiling but exasperated David, played by Brian McManamon, stops his chatter on the phone as David explains that his car stalled down the road and his phone died right after he hung up with AAA.
We would normally be urging an unsuspecting character to keep an eye out at the sudden appearance of a stranger and their door, but what does Warren have to worry about? After Warren permits David inside, he is curious when David brings out a container of cucumber slices to put in his glass, but then he thinks that this the stranded motorist is hitting on him. No homo, so to speak–thank goodness he’s far, far from Brooklyn, am I right? Hutchinson bleeds the unease so quickly that we realize that the feeling has been there all along. Warren brazenly makes comments on the differences between straight and gay marriage and how they “mean something different,” and if the roles were reversed, we’d be telling David to get out as swiftly as he could.
What sets Bad Dad apart from a standard thriller is how it effectively turns the tables on its characters. The more the film unspools, the more we realize that we have never seen some queer characters seek out revenge, because we haven’t been afforded the position in so many stories. Does morality go out the window when we side with a specific character or story? Maybe we have allowed straight characters feel too much at ease? I won’t spoil where the film goes, but I sure would’ve loved to have been in Atlanta to watch this with a raucous crowd.
Bad Dad plays at Landmark’s Midtown Art Cinema on October 2 as part of Out On Film’s Queer Fear: Horror Shorts block. It will stream on the festival’s online programming beginning October 3.
