There are movies that have no place to pick, either because of the plot, the script, or even the acting, but we still watch them over and over again. Some even end up becoming cult classics. Why are we attracted to dirty things?
when A movie bad he comes back A display. One of the most famous examples is ‘The Room’, from 2003. The film was so bad that some theaters even posted a sign saying they wouldn’t give refunds, but word of mouth had the opposite effect, with hordes of fans flocking to theaters to enjoy the nonsense. This is not an isolated case: ‘Trolls 2’ (1990), ‘Battlefield: Earth’ (2000) or ‘Batman and Robin’ (1997) also turned their disjointed scripts, bad effects and illogical decisions into an unintentional comedy.
Shackiness is what you’re looking for. This fascination has a first cousin in the Z series of movies from production companies like Troma, with titles like ‘The Toxic Avenger’ (1984) or ‘The Nazi Surfer’s Must Die’ (1987). The complexity here is entirely intentional, but the result is the same: an experience that is enjoyed precisely because of its terrifying quality. In Spain we have our own examples of ‘Brácula’ (1997) or ‘Karate to Death in Torremolinos’ (2003).
So bad it’s good. This is the name of a study done in 2023 where they investigated why consumers sometimes choose the worst options. The work combines the twelve experiments, five main, and seven studies included in the appendix with a total of 5,400 participants. The researchers wanted to know whether we deliberately choose the things we think are bad and, more importantly, what drives us to do them. To verify this, they proposed different options of different quality in different fields of entertainment: jokes, pictures, videos of dance castings and even karaoke.
Why we like mess. The study concluded that we make the worst choices because we expect it to be more fun and it will entertain us more. In a test, the films were rated worst for their aesthetic quality as well as for their humor and absurdity.
The researchers also noted that the worst options were chosen more often than just mediocre options, so a movie doesn’t just have to be bad to achieve that effect, it has to be so terrible that it’s memorable.
Yes, but. The effect depends on the context. Researchers have found that we enjoy glamor when we perceive it as harmless, cheap and designed for leisure, but it loses its appeal when money is involved or a tangible result is sought, such as learning something or solving a problem. In one experiment, charging $0.25 to watch a video reduced the frequency with which participants chose the worst option, even though they expected it to be more fun. The key to making it funny is that there’s nothing important here, because then the bad thing stops being a joke and becomes a flaw.
Better in company. The study didn’t directly measure this, but its authors point to an important social factor, and that’s that complex things are generally easier (and more fun) to enjoy when they’re shared. The case of ‘The Room’ illustrates this quite well: its screenings have become collective events where audiences laugh at dialogues, shout at the screen and throw plastic spoons. In short, a bad movie becomes funnier when it has someone to laugh at.
Picture | Movistar Plus+
In Xataka | The latest Razzies controversy is only the tip of the iceberg: Oscar detractors have been fooling themselves for decades
