We Found the Worst Movie Ever Made - Utøya Island (2012)
Gather ‘round, children, for I am about to bestow upon you the forbidden knowledge of all who seek so-bad-it’s-good entertainment.
Once upon a time, a friend of mine and I were looking through the terrible independent movies on Amazon Prime - the real bottom-of-the-barrel stuff - looking for gems. We stumbled across a movie called The Last Vampire on Earth (RedLetterMedia actually did a video on that one here). For an idea of what this… thing is about, here’s a fairly level-headed Rotten Tomatoes audience review:
“This movie is perfect, it's so bad, so funny. This movie is the “The Room” version of Twilight. Vitaliy Versace has no idea how to make a film and it shows. Awful acting by both actors whose careers are probably ruined, awful camera work, awful lighting, awful everything. 99% of the movie is in-room audio, and some scenes you can't hear what the characters are saying. The fact that the mother comes to the conclusion that her daughter’s boyfriend is a vampire because he threw up during dinner is baffling. It has no intention of being funny, yet is. Don't let yourself be tricked by the 'Twilight”-like cover. This movie is a disaster and should be viewed by everyone as a comedy. Don't buy it, it's on YouTube in its entirety for free.”
We watched the trailer, and the gleeful horror we felt led us down a four hour-long rabbit hole of watching every trailer of every film from a man called Vitaliy Versace. I say “called” because I refuse to believe “Vitaliy Versace” is anyone’s legal name. It is a name for strippers and terrible Russian directors only.
We didn’t watch any of his movies that day, but Vitaliy took up a special place in my heart from that day on. I’ve been waiting for the right moment to finally bite the bullet and watch one of his atrocities.
That day was last Saturday.
Who is this guy, anyway?
Oh, what a question. Vitaliy Versace is not merely a man - he is an enigma. In my research, I found not a shred of information that hadn’t been written by Versace himself or someone close to him. We know he was born in Russia and raised in Ohio. According to Vitaliy, he dropped out of college (despite needing only two more credits to graduate) and moved to Hollywood to become a famous director. He claims he supported himself by working as a background actor and driving for UPS. I can verify the first one, since he was very public and very misleading about hanging out with award-winning actors on set during that time. In reality, the pictures he posted are just screen-grabs of himself in the same frame as the lead actors. Nice.
Other than that, the only verifiable information I have is that he lives in a massive house (or at least takes pictures in one) and drives a bunch of luxury vehicles (or at least takes pictures with them). He gives off the aura of having more money than he knows what to do with, so that’s what I’m going to assume.
What Vitaliy would like us to believe is that he’s an ultra-talented and ultra-famous visionary whose films are indie works of art. He builds himself up online to be far more relevant than he is, creating profiles for himself on Famous Birthdays websites, tweeting out to his “fans” (and liking those tweets himself), and claiming to be an Emmy Award nominee for Best Director. The real story on that last one is that he entered himself and was accepted as a contender for honors by the Lower Great Lakes chapter of the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences (technically the Emmys) for directing a TV show that aired a single episode in Chicago.
My favorite is his edited IMDb biography, which lists his trademark as his “striking blue eyes.” Yarf.
And this is fairly standard behavior for Mr. Versace. When he’s not stretching the truth of his own level of influence in the film industry, he’s outright lying about his work and stealing others’ content. On his fan club Instagram account (that he made for himself), you can see photos that appear to be the covers of TIME, People, and GQ - all poorly photoshopped with his own glamour shots and weird headlines. Seriously, click on them.
At best, these are aspirational and not meant to fool anyone. But even then, he doesn’t specify his intentions and tags the photos as though they were real. And the strange lies don’t stop there! He also posts photos with well-established actors, claiming they’re signed on to perform in his next movie. Somehow, those actors never seem to manifest.
On his Metacritic page, he claims he was the executive producer of a bunch of high-profile films (The Proposal, for example. Yes, the one with Sandra Bullock). He straight up steals logos and production animations that play at the beginning of his movies, copy and pastes legal jargon that doesn’t make sense or apply to his work, and fully plagiarizes full scenes of other movies. In fact, if you take a look through his filmography, you’ll find that his movies may sound familiar: he’s produced The Last Vampire on Earth, 40 Days of Hunger Games, Warning: 2012 Apocalypse, The Jungle Book: Make-a-Wish (an unfortunate adaptation where Mowgli has cancer and dreamed the whole movie - why are you laughing?), Psycho, Taekwondo Kid (LOL), Beverly Hills Bandits (also referred to as Homie Alone, and yes it’s as racist as it sounds), Cast Away, Aladdin - the list goes on. He actually uses press quotes from the real live action Aladdin adaptation from 2019 in his trailer. Just straight up lies about the quote’s origin. The man has balls.
So here’s my theory. This man, whoever he is, was born into more money than sense and decided one day that he was a genius filmmaker. Then, without putting any effort into becoming a good filmmaker (or even a competent one), he packed his bags, moved to Los Angeles, and proceeded to spend his untold fortune on creating his “masterpieces.” With his unwillingness to hire a production crew, learn to use professional filming equipment, or brainstorm original ideas, the result was a body of work entirely composed of unwatchable and plagiarized concepts.
And it would be one thing if he was filming these dollar store remakes simply because he lacks originality - that’s almost forgivable. But it’s painfully obvious, based on the release dates for his films and the level of plagiarism, that his only intention is to capitalize on pop culture. And in the rare event that he does make something original, as was the case with Utøya Island, it’s based on current events - something topical and eye-catching. He makes and remakes movies that are based on popular concepts with the hope of fooling someone into thinking they’re watching something legitimate.
So that’s my beef with Vitaliy Versace, and a good summary of why I don’t feel bad for roasting him. I could talk about his weird IMDb subterfuge where he created lists of “20 Best Movies of 2011” and “Sexy People of 2011” and snuck his own Twilight ripoff in the middle of a bunch of famous movies and himself in the middle of a bunch of famous actors, respectively. I could talk about his bizarre obsession with clickbait (posting two identical movie uploads on YouTube, one labelled with just the title and the other with the words “Explicit Video” before the title, implying a video features Jonah Hill when it absolutely doesn’t, etc.). I could talk about how his logo on YouTube is just the Google Play logo, or how his movies are riddled with his own personal biases (stilted Christian imagery where it doesn’t belong, a strange fixation on how Muslims are generally bad, deeply internalized stereotypes about pretty much everyone and everything, etc). But the long and the short of it is that Vitaliy Versace tries to ride the coattails of people who actually do good work and manages to do it so poorly that the result is absolutely hysterical.
So I guess, in a way, he won?
So what’s Utøya Island about?
I’m so glad I asked. Actually, I’m not, because it was one of the largest shootings in history.
The subject of the movie is the July 22, 2011 terror attacks in Oslo, Norway. In a short summary, a right wing extremist named Anders Breivik set off a car bomb in the middle of the executive government quarter of Norway, which killed eight and injured another 209. Immediately following that, Breivik dressed in a homemade police uniform with false ID and rode a ferry to a summer camp organized by Norway’s Labor Party on Utøya Island. He then carried out an hour and a half-long massacre against the students and staff with an assault rifle. All told, he ended up killing 69 people and injuring another 110. During his trial, he freely admitted to the crime but denied any wrongdoing, claiming that he was protecting his country from the evils of immigration and Marxism. His trial was in April of 2012, and he was eventually sentenced to 21 years in prison with the possibility of an extension if he was deemed to be a continued threat to society.
So I assume he handled this extremely sensitive subject with grace and respect?
Good one!
If you already noticed the fun detail about this movie’s release date, congratulations! If not, allow me to elaborate: the Oslo terror attacks happened on July 22, 2011. This movie was released in 2012. More specifically, it was released on July 22, 2012 - on the one year anniversary of the massacre.
BRASS. BALLS.
And I mean that in the worst possible way. This man had the raw audacity to begin filming this “movie” two months after almost 100 people lost their lives, and then he choose to release his steaming pile of garbage on the anniversary of the survivors’ most severe trauma? That would have been unacceptable even if the movie was good! The fact that it’s an affront to humanity only rubs salt in the wound! The survivors were more than outspoken about their outrage when he announced the film’s development, and still he chose to prioritize money over their humanity.
How bad is it?
Let me let a Letterboxd review sum it up:
“Seemingly based on a single headline he read about the event. Completely void of both knowledge, compassion and skill. Laughably incompetent in every possible aspect. Barely audible dialogue, shooting the same spots as different locations over and over, horrible acting, such bad visuals that listing the problems just isn't worth the time. And actually made only months after the actual event took place in a desperate and ill-conceived attempt at clinging on to something topical. And padding for length is one thing, but having people walk around in a forest and eating a banana for half your film is pathetic. Absolute bottom of the barrel. The actual film is 55 minutes long, but the one he put out on YouTube is stretched to one and a half hours by including an apology for the film you just watched as well as promotions for his other films that look equally incompetent and insensitive.”
Or, more succinctly:
“Vitaliy Versace is genuinely the devil.”
There is absolutely no interesting way for me to explain to you the events of this film. In a nutshell, Versace sets the tone by including 10 solid minutes of opening credits laid over a static shot of a lake. Y’all, he even included opening credits for Key Grip. It was weird.
We see people aimlessly arrive on Utøya Island via a ferry and have weird, stilted conversations about nothing. Then we see Anders Breivik, played by a chubby blonde man with a Californian accent and music note tattoos on his arm, have a nice expository rant about how much he hates Muslims to a camera. Then Breivik rows a boat to Utøya Island, and the following hour and ten minutes is him walking around the same locations from different angles, shooting teens and staff indiscriminately with his plastic assault rifle. At one point, the film dedicates a solid ten minutes to Breivik sitting down to eat a banana. It’s bonkers.
It resolves with Breivik being arrested after a nonsensical hour that I will never get back, an obligatory scene of creepy Christian imagery as all the dead teens, dressed in white, dance half heartedly and disappear into, I don’t know, Heaven, I guess?
Strangely, the most baffling part of the whole movie came after the end credits, where Vitaliy Versace himself spends 25 minutes driving to different locations in Beverly Hills in his Rolls Royce and apologizing profusely for his movie. More accurately, he simultaneously apologizes for how bad the movie is and insists that it’s a game-changing work of art. You have to see it to believe it.
Usually when we do these episodes, we recommend you watch the films in question to get a better idea of what you’re getting into. In this case, I can only recommend watching it in a group while extremely inebriated. My conscience will not allow me to recommend you suffer the way I did. Like the reviews I mentioned said, don’t support his films on Amazon, just watch them for free on YouTube. It’s abysmal. It’s amazing. I’m worse off having seen this film. I can’t wait to watch another one.