Director Stewart Thorndike puts a queer spin on The Shining in the claustrophobic indie thriller Bad Things

Ruthie (Gayle Rankin) has recently inherited her grandmother’s abandoned hotel, and has returned to stay in it for a few days with her girlfriend Cal (Hari Nef), their friend Maddie (Rad Pereira) and seductive tagalong Fran (Annabelle Dexter-Jones).

Despite feeling uncomfortable there, Ruthie is hoping to use the trip fix her and Cal’s troubled relationship. She’s also reluctantly entertaining the idea of keeping and running the hotel with Cal instead of selling. After an unexpected moment of infidelity, the weekend takes some increasingly unusual turns and it soon seems as though they’re not alone in the hotel.

Co-starring Molly Ringwald, this claustrophobic indie thriller takes some loose inspiration from Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining, putting a decidedly queer spin on the haunted hotel subgenre. Director Stewart Thorndike, who burst onto the scene with the equally chilling queer horror indie Lyle in 2014, is also the perfect filmmaker to take on a Kubrick homage. She had an acting role in the auteur’s final film Eyes Wide Shut and got a first-hand glimpse into his mastery.

Watch the trailer for Bad Things below and click here to pre-order your copy. The film will be available on DVD starting this week at TLAgay.