Bad Chemistry: Bad Breakups and Worse Parents in Slasher Horror

Michael Rognlie and EE Tallent’s Bad Chemistry is a 20-minute slasher-Get Out lovechild. The story of a breakup that gets much worse than either party planned or expected, it follows Sara through the travails of the fateful night and the days after in a guest invitation from hell. 

Of all the plot events, the breakup is a quirky surprise that seems to have come straight out of one of the Scary Movies. While Sara (Alex Naumann) ends things with Jonathan (Michael Muñoz), the latter goes above and beyond the call of duty to demonstrate the reasonableness of the former’s decision. A comically slovenly man who toes the line between quite pathetic and somewhat deranged, he devours a sandwich in the middle of the breakup and then pauses to incorporate a joke into the situation. Perhaps the real surprise is that Sara even agreed to date such a person. 

A possible explanation provided by the film is that she is an orphan, a fact that reveals itself to be far more perilous than she could have expected. But then again, no one in a horror movie comes with any preconceived notions about danger and safety. So when a sudden intrusion into the car and the breakup leaves Sara bedbound at Jonathan’s parents’ house, she thinks nothing of Mary’s (Jonathan’s mother, played by Michelle Stahl) insistent sugary sweetness as she offers Sara cup after cup of tea. Tea, of course, like milk for psychopaths, is now the universal signifier of things being very, very wrong with a maternal figure. But Sara does not and will not know for a disastrous amount of time. 

The title derives itself from the relationship that should never have existed as well as Jonathan’s life’s work, confined in his bedroom and accessible to his mother. Terrible equation if there ever was one. 

The climax is comfortably genre obedient in both the seeming ending and the final twist. The audience is left once again with the satisfaction of sighing, if only the characters knew better. 

Watch Bad Chemistry Short Film Trailer