The Room (2003) was a “so bad, it’s good” B-movie turned beloved cult-classic. It’s the quintessential example of a film people love to make fun of, which is why it’s remained in the zeitgeist for two decades. Unlike the Sharknados of the industry that rely on campy scripts and cheesy special effects, The Room stood out through the uniquely bizarre choices made by director and lead actor, Tommy Wiseau. Erik Bloomquist seems to be trying to take a page from Wiseau’s playbook with his film, Founders Day. What starts out as a campy slasher-comedy decays into a Wiseau-style head scratcher that barely resembles a feature film. But what Bloomquist fails to realize is that The Room’s success was lightning in a bottle – the enigmatic director ended up with an iconic film due to his innate weirdness. This totally contrasts with the “self-aware” parody films that have since invaded Hollywood. While the two sub-genres may appear similar in the sense that they are both composed of critically “bad” films, the intent and final products are different. Bloomquist confuses the two, thinking that simply making an intentionally bad movie is all it takes for fans to line up to laugh. Instead, audiences will surely pan the confusing cross between a cheesy slasher and B-movie parody.
Founders Day follows the candidates of a mayoral election and their children in a small town as a series of violent deaths unfold. It’s eerily similar to 2023’s Thanksgiving, another intentionally cheesy slasher featuring a masked killer terrorizing a small town, but Thanksgiving somehow feels restrained and definitely more coherent in comparison. While Thanksgiving is consistent over its runtime, Founders Day begins as a typical slasher set against the backdrop of the election, bouncing from character to character as the killer attacks, but teeters between that formula and an exploration of the tedious relationships between the characters. And Bloomquist focuses on so many relationships that it’s difficult to remember who each character is, how their relationships relate to the wider film or why we should care about them at all. On top of that, the dialogue is near nonsensical, making it hard to follow a single conversation to conclusion.
As a whole, the film doesn’t feel real because nothing is grounded in reality. Characters don’t react to deaths in a nearly believable way, relationships feel phony, the kids look too old and are put in unrealistic situations… the list goes on. Most of the performances, aside from that of Naomi Grace in the lead role, feel like caricatures, as does the political messaging. It would be easy to pick apart so many of the details of the film, but it’s likely Bloomquist intentionally made something nonsensical. Bloomquist thinks that by making a self-aware film that’s intentionally bad, the movie is beyond reproach. But the whole beauty of something beloved for how bad it is, like The Room, is that it’s not trying to do anything; Wiseau was earnestly attempting to make a good film. It’s like someone trying to meme their own photo – it just doesn’t work when you try to make yourself the butt of the joke.
There’s been something of a resurgence – especially in the horror/comedy genre – of these sorts of ironic and over-the-top films. Last year saw a few, including the aforementioned Thanksgiving or the briefly viral sensation and critical mess of Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey. The latter is a good example of what Bloomquist may have been aiming for – a film that’s made to be memed and capture clicks on social media. And though we’ve seen swathes of ironic moviegoers hit theaters for showings of The Room or even the likes of the most recent Minions iteration or Morbius, it’s pretty clear that the last thing these audiences want is for the studios to be in on the joke.
Photo courtesy of Dark Sky Films
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