Online streaming services like Amazon Prime have been criticized for producing a massive amount of unwatchable material. They make award-winning films and clever, original series, but they also closely follow popular trends and try to guess what the public wants. Sometimes, they succeed, but recently, they’ve scored more than a few misses.

From the trailer, Tanya Wexler’s Jolt looks like a mindless popcorn movie you can enjoy without thinking too hard. In the past, you may have had days when you were stuck on the couch and too lazy to look for the remote.

A bad (sometimes awful) film draws you in with explosions, hilarious dialogue, and pretty faces. Watching the film makes you regret wasting the afternoon, but eventually, you enjoy the movie and laugh at all the unintentional humor.

Popcorn films are entertaining when they’re either well-made or hilarious. Action films don’t need a big budget. The 1977 classic from Elliot Silverstein, The Car, is a good example. It’s full of bad acting and plotting, but it made me laugh in all the wrong places, and I had a blast watching it.

Jolt is not one of those films, and the talented cast cannot save or handle the awful (worse than the rough drafts for Reefer Madness) mess. Kate Beckinsale usually excels in science fiction/action movies, and she has a talent for sarcasm.

She is great as a half-vampire killer in the Underworld movies and creepy as the antagonist in the remake of Total Recall. She can act, but only a complete rewrite of the script and soundtrack would’ve saved her electrified heroine.

In Jolt, she’s plagued with anger management issues so severe that she has to shock herself continuously to keep from murdering the world.

Bad Dialogue and Music, but Nice McLaren

Susan Sarandon narrates the film’s opening and introduces the adolescent version of Lindy (Kate Beckinsale). The painful monologue is a harbinger of a rough road ahead.

As a young girl, Lindy pushes a friend’s face into a birthday cake and beats a young boy repeatedly with a baseball bat.  Although violent sequences with children can be framed with a lighter touch (as in Christmas movies) and portrayed as funny, Wexler’s scenes are darker and more exploitative.

Since the early 20th century, films and television shows have displayed violent children with more grace, humor, and class.

For instance, the kids in the Umbrella Academy kill henchmen with their superpowers; sometimes they do it in twisted and graphic ways, but they never seem like cheap thugs, and most of the time, they’re humorous.

Young Lindy acts like she could bite the head off the Antichrist, but she’s so unlikeable and one-dimensional you don’t care about her struggles.

As for the soundtrack, it only adds to the misery. I can tolerate music I don’t like when it seems to fit the scene as long as it’s brief. Jolt’s soundtrack, put together by Dominic Lewis (a British composer for television and film), is one of the worst I’ve ever heard, and I lived through the ‘80s.

Whether it’s death metal from Latvia, hip-hop from a sociologist, or a Kenny G song recorded in a Geritol factory, the songs have to complement the action in the movie.

Lindy struts down in the street and tries not to stab pedestrians while the soundtrack tears into your eardrums and rips them to shreds.

Repeat the Same Joke Several Times, and It Just Gets Funnier

Lindy goes on a rampage when she discovers the guy she went on one date with is dead. Her loose connection to her one-night stand is frequently brought up throughout the film, and after the seventh or eighth time a new character asks Lindy about her almost-boyfriend, you might laugh out of boredom.

It’s a shame that Stanley Tucci and Kate Beckinsale couldn’t save the mess, but they’re not merely handicapped by the script. They act like Charles Bronson in Death Wish V. They don’t care enough or seem interested in making the film better. However, maybe the most entertaining Death Wish film is a bad example.

Bronson cruises through Death Wish V without much emotion, but at least the story involves a psychopath named Flakes with a dandruff problem.

Throughout the film, the cold-blood killer brushes dandruff off his shoulders in disgust. At one point, the dialogue focuses on Flakes complaining about his new medicated shampoo.

Ah, the Red Light District looks heavenly this evening!

He is a repulsive character. He runs people over with cars, slams Bronson’s girlfriend headfirst into a bathroom mirror, and complains about his itchy noggin. However, he’s more appealing than the heroes and villains in Jolt.

He dies when Bronson calls out, “Hey Flakes, I gotta cure for your dandruff problem,” and triggers an explosive remote-control soccer ball that sets Flakes’ head ablaze. Now, that’s quality bad cinema.

Here are some other bad movies you can watch instead of Electric Beckinsale:

  • Death Wish IV
  • Return of the Killer Tomatoes (starring George Clooney)
  • Hudson Hawk
  • Return of the Living Dead
  • Gotcha!
  • License To Drive
  • Our Man Flint
  • In Like Flint
  • The Presidio
  • Loaded Weapon
  • The Last Temptation of Christ
  • Night Patrol
  • The Big Chill
  • The Ice Pirates
  • Witchboard
  • The Night of the Comet
  • Throw Mama From the Train
  • Moonraker
  • Surf Nazis Must Die
  • Flash Gordon