More likely than not, everyone has seen at least one terrible movie in their lifetime. For some, bad movies are actually the best movies, and that’s definitely the case for NC State’s Bad Film Club.

Bad movies come in all shapes and sizes — most notably, bad movies that were supposed to be great movies. The 2019 film “Cats” landed itself firmly in this category. Being one of the most famous and beloved Broadway musicals, fans were sorely disappointed when the film adaptation didn’t live up to the hype.

After “Cats” tanked at the box office, Bad Film Club naturally decided to screen it. Vice president Carter McDermott, a third-year studying communication, said the club focused on the film.

“The audience was very active for that one because everyone was just kind of suffering together,” McDermott said. “We all eventually started kind of riffing on it and making fun of it.”

Since “Cats” was so anticipated, the film creators spared no expense and landed a star-studded cast including Taylor Swift, Jason Derulo, Idris Elba and James Corden. Bad film lovers will understand why this made it McDermott’s favorite screening of the club so far.

“I really enjoyed ‘Cats’ because it was just hilarious watching an A-list cast,” McDermott said. “Clearly a lot of them thought they were doing something very profound. There were some really impressive technical parts of the movie, but as a whole, it really was like watching a train wreck. It was a great experience.”

Bad Film Club president Sophia Mastorakis, a second-year studying industrial design, similarly has an intense love of bad movies and shared her motivation for starting the club.

“I kept forcing my roommates to watch bad movies that I would find, and at a certain point, it started feeling unethical to force these bad movies on them,” Mastorakis said. “So I decided to start a club for people to watch if they wanted to, without being forced.”

Mastorakis initially created an informal Discord channel last year to do virtual screenings. It turned out a lot of people like watching the so-bad-it’s-good genre and over 100 people joined the channel.

After seeing the response, Mastorakis recruited McDermott and the Bad Film Club became official at the beginning of this fall semester. Screenings happen once a month in person and while there aren’t any more this fall, Bad Film Club will be back in action come spring semester (location TBD). 

Past screenings include “Troll” (and weirdly unrelated “Troll 2”), “Samurai Cop,” “Rubber” and, of course, “Cats.” Audience reaction depends on the movie. As in the case of “Cats,” some joke throughout, but other times the film is so bad words can’t describe it.

“Our most recent movie was ‘Rubber,’” Mastorakis said. “I don’t think anyone talked because it was just confusing. Everyone was just like ‘I don’t have anything to say because this is so out there.’”

While there aren’t a lot of hard rules to follow for film selection, there’s one biggie:

“No graphic sex scenes,” Mastorakis said. “We had that issue with ‘Samurai Cop.’ I didn’t vet it as much as I should have and there were like multiple.”

Even so, that screening was still a success, inspiring McDermott to get involved.

“Watching [Samurai Cop] with an audience was really entertaining,” McDermott said. “It made me want to get more involved and screen like really terrible movies on campus because it can be really fun if you have a good audience for them.”

Bad Film Club has an informal vetting mandate before selecting films to make sure there isn’t any questionable content, because bad movies can get pretty bad. Mastorakis keeps a running list of suggestions, and before every screening, they do some research and pick one out. There hasn’t been a formalized schedule, but Mastorakis has bounced around a few possibilities for next semester.

“I’d definitely like to do ‘The Room’ eventually,” Mastorakis said. “That’s definitely like the magnum opus of bad movies. Also, I’d like to show some Neil Breen movies. I haven’t watched them, but I’ve watched the trailers. They seem insane.”

The amount of bad movies in the world is too overwhelming to dig through for the hidden gems. Some bad movies are really just bad, and not in a good way. You need a Bad Film Club to take on that search instead. Follow their Instagram for updates and get some friends together to watch only the best worst movies.