Bad movies can be laugh riots, howlers, like shoddy horror pictures or inane science-fiction, to be indulged in or cackled through or suffered with glee. Bad movies are often likeable, or somehow charming, or else might endear themselves to you with personality or ambition, like, say, Southland Tales or Jupiter Ascending.
Whereas a bad time at the movies only brings despair. A bad time at the movies isnt droll or chucklesome or ironically diverting ‒ its just miserable.
Suicide Squad is the most miserable time I've had at the movies in my life.
A moviegoing experience this execrable ‒ this soul-searchingly unpleasant, this watch-checkingly dull, this corporate-restructuringly ill-conceived ‒ practically implores you to assign blame, as I imagine somebody in a position of authority over the people responsible for making the film will.
We might look to DC Films, who refuse to let a total lack of creativity or talent interfere in their aspiration to cultivate a multi-billion-dollar blockbuster universe of interlocking comic book adaptations. We might look to Warner Bros., whose confidence in that universe, eroded by the response to Batman v Superman earlier this summer, provoked a cataract of last-minute refinements to a film they feared would likewise flounder.
We might look to the director, David Ayer, who cant direct. Or we might look beyond the symptoms and to the festering, implacable disease: our interest in superheroes, which has gone from unhealthy to terminal, from amusing fantasies to whatever nightmare this is.
