Very Bad Things (1998)

Directed by Peter Berg. Starring Christian Slater, Jon Favreau, Jeremy Piven, Daniel Stern, Leland Orser, Cameron Diaz, Jeanne Tripplehorn. [R]

Actor Peter Berg transitions to directing with this appreciably mean-spirited black comedy showing the escalating repercussions of a boys’ night out that goes very, very wrong. Days away from getting married, Favreau heads to Vegas with four brothers/friends for a bachelor party, but a fatal accident leaves the stripper they hired dead on the floor in the hotel bathroom. After cleaning up the mess and burying bodies (yes, multiple) in the desert, the five men need to come to terms with their guilt…or, in the case of amoral ringleader Slater, clean up a few loose ends. If you’re in it for rooting interest or pleasant yuks or airtight logic, keep moving along, because you won’t find it here. If you want to see bad deeds spin out of control with even worse deeds, bro culture get mercilessly mocked, ghoulishly funny and pseudo-ironic plot turns digging deeper into moral decay and karmic just desserts, and Slater sink his teeth into the opportunity to play a Machiavellian devil’s advocate as a coercive psychopath, you just might have a twisted good time. Although she eventually surrenders to over-the-top villainy, Cameron Diaz scores ice-pick jabs here and there as the bride from hell.

68/100