“You picked Haddaway?”
2012: Jerry’s, somewhere in the boonies, is the self-proclaimed ‘best bar in town’, with a thriving karaoke night taking place – right up until a drunk stumbles over and yanks out the machine’s power cable, blasting the literal eyeballs out of the current performer.
I like it when a film makes a strong declaration of intent, and they don’t come much stronger than this opening scene in Bad Karaoke (2026) with its (okay, CGI) flying eyeballs making things nice and clear. This is to the credit of director and writer Chris Lightbody and his Bad Bong soundtrack pedigree, and ditto co-director Robert J. Steinmiller Jr, who has a similar background: I don’t know exactly how you get from writing Bad Bong soundtrack music to directing a film about karaoke gone awry, but it doesn’t feel like the most outlandish turn of events, and if you know anything at all about the Bad Bong films, then you’ll know the sort of thing to expect here: there’s a cursed object which goes on to terrorise a group of hapless young people. There’s even a very small Venn diagram overlap here with Bad Karaoke‘s stoner-ish (and occasionally outright stoned) key players. But, on with the film at hand.
We next meet our particular hapless young people: this is a covers band, The Nunu (it’s not clear if the slang meaning for this term is intentional, but it’ll certainly be understood at FrightFest), comprising of six members. After a temporary breakdown at the side of the road – where we first meet them – they’re soon on the move to their overnight destination (a cabin in the woods!) before a wedding gig the following day. This leaves them plenty of time for a detour, and wouldn’t you know it, they end up at Jerry’s. Some relationship-building later, we get to the already-anticipated meat of the plot: karaoke. The ill-fated karaoke machine, long since stored away in the bar, is discovered by band member Emily (Lexi Underwood), who is (perhaps a little keenly) permitted to take it with her by the current bartender. So we now have an apparently cursed Song-a-Ling at hand, all nice and ready for when the band gets settled into their accommodation.
There’s a little lull in the pace around here – the film does have some fits and starts along the way – but eventually, inevitably, the machine gets switched on. The deal seems to be this: the machine enlists each individual to sing a song, but their performances get judged by the possessed machine itself, with a grisly demise in store for anyone whose singing doesn’t pass muster…
As suggested above, Bad Karaoke knows exactly what it is and it’s happy for us to be under no illusions either. Fans of daft horror comedy will enjoy this; people who are more indifferent to the genre will likely still feel that the film passes the time amicably. You need to be happy to overlook some of the increasingly blurry and contentious lines between practical FX, green screen and computer-generated content, something which seems to get ever more objectionable as time goes on and new films get made, but we get some good set pieces which should pass muster. If anything, it could have leaned into the splattery gore a lot harder and probably pleased a lot more people. There’s also a breezy script, with performances which are pitched just right for the material, plus some funny skits and inclusions (even at the expense of at least one minor continuity error). The lore here, when it comes, is minimal – but it adds enough context to flesh things out in the film’s final act.
This isn’t a film which really lends itself to an in-depth review: that probably doesn’t need further explanation, but just in case, it’s because this is a relatively straightforward yarn with one daft idea at its core, one which lends itself to a few jokes and a few gory, entertaining scenes. Bad Karaoke is cartoonish and often gleefully obnoxious, but short and snappy enough to do its thing inside eighty minutes. If you look very closely, you might also feel that the film makes a serious point about the importance of cherishing original music, but this isn’t done in any sort of disproportionate, comedy-killing depth and you may even miss it, if you’re more engaged by exploding heads and soupification. It’s no great crime if so, and it works either way.
Bad Karaoke (2026) received its World Premiere at Tubi FrightFest on August 30th.