How to have a 'good bad horror film'

The Qualifications

The Good Bad Movie genre is not easy to define. The line between so-bad-it’s-good and so-bad-I-left-the-theater is quite thin; taste is subjective, and what one person finds to be amusingly bad others may consider plain bad. The emergence of parody movies, meanwhile, raises questions about how integral artistic intent is in giving a film the Good Bad label. Therefore, following these three rules is a solid, efficient way to determine whether a movie is Good Bad:

1. Enjoyment of the movie must be derived from its badness. Its badness needs to be the thing that creates a sense of bewildered enjoyment.
2. There must be a pervading sense that those who made the film thought what they were doing was great, or at least good. Good Bad Movies have minimal self-awareness. Here are two examples that may help explain this sentiment: (1) MacGruber is not a Good Bad Movie, it’s a tribute to Good Bad Movies, and (2) Fast Five is not a Good Bad Movie, it is a movie that intentionally wades into ridiculousness (and then manufactures a reaction similar to the one a Good Bad Movie elicits naturally).
3. The movie must have been something of a critical failure when it was released. Critics, god bless them, hold movies to a high standard as an art form and generally don’t reward a movie for being of low quality. In that way, they’re a helpful, as-objective-as-possible resource in determining which films are bad, and therefore eligible to be Good Bad.

EXAMPLES