Sadie Porter, Contributing Writer
There is not a theater experience quite like Bad Movie Night Club. Viewers are free to react however they like without judgement from the other members. Hosting a screening every Wednesday at 8 p.m., Bad Movie Night shows some truly terrible, high camp movies.
Gabriel Kelso, a fourth-year graphic design student and the club’s founder and president, had the idea to create Bad Movie Night on a whim when he spoke to a friend about his love for bad movies.
Little did Kelso know that so many people share his niche interest and were waiting for a club like this.
What constitutes a bad movie? There is a difference between a film being unwatchable versus a film that had good intentions and a substantial budget but failed to meet expectations.
Bad Movie Night Club encourages viewers to set aside traditional theater etiquette and embrace the absurdity of the films.
“If something particularly ridiculous happens, we’ll probably shout it out and then we talk about it afterwards,” Kelso said.
Beckett Dews, a second-year English student and the club’s treasurer and social media manager, joined Kelso after he reached out in need of extra officers. As a longtime film enthusiast, Dews was happy to get involved.
“It is also just very uniting to be in a room with other people and just laughing at how bad something is,” Dews said.
Dews grew up on physical media in a household that valued the arts, making him able to appreciate the good films, the bad ones and everything in-between.
Bad Movie Night Club offers students a free alternative to traditional movie theaters, where ticket prices can make screenings less accessible. Its interactive format allows viewers to react to films alongside other students.
“The number one thing is that it’s free,” Dews said. “I think so many people are being priced out of community — there’s not really any third spaces.”
Diona Jenkins, a second-year criminal justice student and the club’s vice president, said Bad Movie Night Club brings many different niches together.
“Bad Movie Club is the heart of a lot of things here at VCU,” Jenkins said. “We bring in such a different and diverse group of people.”
The club attracts not only people interested in film, but also people who love art, graphic design, TV and any kind of artistic expression, according to Jenkins.
Jenkins sees the electric energy that Bad Movie Night Club brings out of people.
“It’s rare that I see people being so outgoing and social around campus because I think everybody’s a little bit to themselves,” Jenkins said.
Bad Movie Night Club gained traction at the fall SOVO fair, bringing in more viewers at subsequent meetings.
The largest audience so far was around 300 guests during a collaboration with the Yaoi Yuri Club to screen “Nyan-Neko Sugar Girls.”
For the month of October, the club is showing only horror and Halloween themed films, such as “Scary Movie 4,” “Jason X” and “Hood of The Living Dead.”
Bad Movie Night Club holds weekly meetings each Thursday at 8 p.m. in the MCALC building, room 1107. More information can be found at their Instagram @badmovienightatvcu.