Bad Samaritan (Review)

Bad Samaritan Plays it too Safe.

Bad Samaritan is a movie that I’ve been looking forward to for a few months. Ever since David Tennant gave his incredible performance as Kilgrave on the Marvel Netflix series Jessica Jones. The idea of him playing a totally demented psychopath had me giddy with anticipation. However, when it comes to this film that’s about where the fun ends. Even with David Tennant playing the big bad wolf, he stumbles too much to save Bad Samaritan from being, well, a bad movie.

I really wanted to like Bad Samaritan, especially because I’m a sucker for a good horror movie that can make your skin crawl. There are definitely some moments in the film that will make audiences jump and cringe. However, a lot of those scenes that make you cringe are the ones where David Tennant’s American accent starts to slip. I’m not sure why they decided to make his character American, possibly to make Robert Sheehan’s Irish accent stand out more, but it’s definitely not one of Tennant’s strong suits.

There are plenty of other things that are cringeworthy in Bad Samaritan other than the occasional accent slip. Brandon Boyce tries to create a creepy serial character to act as the menacing villain of the movie but fails miserably when it comes to his background. Tennant’s character, Cale Erendreich, is an unimaginably rich trust fund brat who was so obsessed with horses that breaking them no longer thriller him. So, he took to breaking humans much like horses. It’s a premise for a serial killer that feels more suited to being a Criminal Minds psycho of the week than a big screen villain. Even ignoring the motives behind Erendreich’s character, he never comes across as threatening. Sure he has money to throw at problems and proves to be incredibly cunning, but he lacks the right kind of presence for something like this. His performance though it incredibly chilling at certain times. There’s no question that Tennant is a great actor, but the character he’s given to work with is kind of pathetic.

The title of the film itself comes from the protagonist who is valet that burgles people’s homes while they’re at dinner. Sheehan manages to make the character charming at times, but he feels incredibly out of place when it comes to this movie. For some reason, the character is made Irish, which really doesn’t add much to the overall story at all. More than that though he seems incredibly unsuited for the situation he finds himself in. The script makes him more bumbling than he needs to be when it comes to trying to convince the cops or those around him that Erendreich is a monster walking among them. It’s just another one of the horror movie tropes that I can’t stand.

Then again, despite the fact that Bad Samaritan is riddled with cliches, it does get a few things right. With Tennant more focused on psychologically breaking his victims rather than just killing them off when they become problematic, it allows the stakes to continuously rise for the hero. His life is slowly taken apart by a man who is not only smart but has the resources to destroy the struggling millennial. It’s during this sequences of events that Tennant manages to do his best work. The scenes where he gives his maniacal rants though seem forced and cumbersome. In a lot of ways, Tennant does his best work in Bad Samaritan when he isn’t talking.

There isn’t a lot in Bad Samaritan that we haven’t seen before in one way or another. It’s filled with the same cliches from so many other horror/thrillers and plays it safe for much of the film. In a way though, that’s good because it pretty much follows a paint by numbers when it comes to what audiences like from these sorts of things. Though it stumbles from time to time because it tries to pound square pegs into round plot holes, there is enough salvageable here to at least let fans of the genre have some fun while watching it. Of course, if you’re looking for something really scary then you’re better off just skipping this one.