Very Bad Things is a 1998 black comedy, directed by Peter Berg. It stars Jon Favreau, Cameron Diaz, Christian Slater and Jeremy Piven, with co-stars Daniel Stern, and Leland Orser. It shares major plot elements with the 1997 movie Stag.
Plot
Kyle Fisher (Jon Favreau) is days away from his wedding and welcomes his bachelor party weekend as a chance to break free from the pressure from his Bridezilla fiancée Laura (Cameron Diaz). Things are as chaotic as expected in their hotel in Las Vegas— drink, drugs and a stripper.
However, trouble begins when Kyle's friend Michael (Jeremy Piven) has sex with the stripper (real-life porn star Kobe Tai) in the hotel bathroom. While having sex with her, he slips and slams her head against a towel hook in the wall, accidentally killing her. When a security guard finds the dead stripper's body, he threatens to call the police but is silenced when he is stabbed to death with a corkscrew by Robert Boyd (Christian Slater). Boyd, a real estate salesman and recent graduate of a self-help program, takes charge of the group and devises a plan to dispose of the bodies by burying them in the desert. The group grudgingly goes through with the plan, but soon guilt and nerves begin to destroy the group and unravel their idyllic lives.
Upon returning from Las Vegas, Michael's brother Adam (Daniel Stern) becomes convinced that the authorities have discovered the bodies and are closing in on the group. After he reads an article in a newspaper that mentions the security guard's disappearance, and the fact that the man was a father, Adam flies into a rage against Michael and has to be restrained. Later, during Kyle and Laura's rehearsal dinner, Adam cracks under the pressure, leading to another confrontation between Adam and Michael in the parking lot outside. The rest of the group breaks up the fight and convinces Michael to leave, but instead Michael decides to crash into Adam's beloved minivan. Seeing his brother's intentions, Adam darts in front of Michael's Jeep at the last moment, hoping to stop him. However, Michael cannot swerve in time and Adam is crushed in the collision, to everyone's horror.
Later in the hospital, a doctor asks Adam's wife Lois (Jeanne Tripplehorn) to Adam's bedside as his situation is critical. As the rest of the group follow, they see Adam whisper a few words to Lois before going into cardiac arrest and subsequently dying. Later that evening, a frustrated and increasingly psychotic Boyd ponders what knowledge Adam may have passed on to his wife, while Michael grows more despondent and unstable due to his accidental murder of his brother. Meanwhile, Kyle and Laura's wedding grows ever closer and Laura's stranglehold over the tiniest details of the wedding put an ever-increasing strain on their relationship.
Soon afterwards, Lois calls the group over to her house and drops a bombshell. Adam had indeed mentioned that something had happened in Vegas, although he had died before he was able to tell Lois the whole story. Now Lois presses the group for information, wanting to know what mysterious event had happened in Vegas. The group feigns ignorance. Boyd attempts to dissuade Lois from any idea that something bad had happened, but due to Lois' mistrust of Boyd, she does not believe him. Seeing Michael in a state of despair, Lois prods him for information, threatening to call the police if she is not told the truth. As Michael is about to crack and seeing Boyd pick up a knife with the possible intent of murdering Lois, Kyle quickly makes up a story about Adam having sex with a prostitute in Vegas. Although she bitterly denounces Kyle's lie, Lois appears to believe it, as if it had been something she had long suspected, and the group leaves without the police being called.
Unbeknownst to the rest of the group, however, Boyd is unsatisfied with the loose ends concerning Lois and her partial knowledge of the murders in Vegas. Dropping Kyle, Michael, and Kyle's best friend Charles Moore (Leland Orser) off at a nearby bar, Boyd returns to Lois' house. A violent fight ensues after Lois realizes that Boyd intends to kill her. She does severe damage to Boyd, including inflicting multiple scratches to his face, biting him in the groin, and throwing him through a window. However, it is implied that Boyd does eventually succeed in killing Lois. Immediately afterwards, Boyd calls the three friends at the bar, telling them that Lois wishes to speak to Michael. Kyle and Charles walk an extremely intoxicated Michael out to the car and over to Lois' house. Michael walks up to the house as Kyle and Charles stay in the car. Moments later, a loud noise, implied as being a gunshot, comes from the direction of the house and Boyd enters the car without Michael in tow. It is then that Boyd's psychosis is clearly demonstrated to Kyle and Charles as he concocts a false love triangle story to explain his murders of Lois and Michael, in case any of the remaining three friends are questioned by the police.
The next day, Kyle and Laura discover that they have been awarded custody of Adam and Lois' two disabled children and their dog. This angers Laura, as this throws a wrench in her wedding plans, but the couple is gratified to hear that Adam and Lois had a large life insurance policy and equity on their home that Kyle and Laura will be able to use in the children's upbringing. However, they soon learn that Adam's life insurance policy had lapsed and his home's value had plummeted in recent years. This, along with Adam being in arrears on property taxes, leads to the sum of $500,000 that Kyle and Laura expects to inherit to drop to $14,223. This new stress proves to be too much for Kyle, who confesses to Laura the two murders that happened in Vegas. Instead of being horrified at the confession, Laura is enraged that there is yet another distraction from her wedding day and tells Kyle to focus on the wedding, dismissing the confession out of hand.
On the day of the wedding, Boyd confronts Kyle about the insurance money he inherited from Adam and demands his "share". Kyle attempts to tell Boyd that there was no money, but Boyd does not believe him. He attacks Kyle and begins strangling him, just to be bludgeoned from behind by Laura in her wedding dress, wielding a metal rope post. After pummeling Boyd into unconsciousness and leaving him for dead, Laura dismissively tells Kyle to get ready for the wedding. During the wedding, it is discovered that Boyd had the rings for the ceremony. Charles goes to retrieve them as Boyd regains consciousness and begins crawling up the stairs towards the wedding hall. Charles inadvertently knocks a badly-bloodied Boyd down the stairwell and nervously follows after him. Reaching into Boyd's coat pocket for the rings, Charles screams as Boyd once again wakes and grabs his hand. However, Boyd quickly loses consciousness and dies from his injuries and Charles is able to retrieve the rings and rejoin the ceremony, which ends without further incident.
Later, Kyle attempts to talk to Laura about his confession and is horrified to hear that she wishes more loose ends to be tied up. Laura orders him to kill his friend Charles Moore, the last witness to the murders (besides Kyle) who is still alive. She also orders him to kill Adam and Lois' children and their dog to rid her of her responsibilities towards them. Kyle takes Charles, the dog, and a large suitcase containing Boyd's body back out to the Vegas desert with the intent on burying all three. In a cutaway scene, Kyle appears to be preparing to bludgeon Charles to death with his shovel. However, the next scene shows them all, except for the suitcase containing Boyd, driving back from the burial site, as it is apparent that Kyle could not go through with murdering Moore and the dog. As he drives, Kyle daydreams about the good times the group had together before the murders occurred. Unfortunately, he loses focus on driving while daydreaming and violently crashes head-on into an oncoming car.
The final scene shows Laura scrubbing and cleaning the house in a ratty bathrobe, living the life of a housewife, a life that she has always detested. Kyle has lost his legs as a result of the crash and Charles appears to have become a quadriplegic. It is also shown that the dog lost a leg in the crash. Laura is now responsible for looking after Kyle, Charles, Adam and Lois' two boys, and their dog, all five of which are disabled. Distraught, she runs out into the street with her toilet brush and sponge and falls down, crying and shrieking in anguish, as the credits roll.
Cast
References
External links
