They showed her no shame... she showed them no mercy.
Bad Reputation is a 2005 American Rape and Revenge Slasher Movie.
Michelle is a dorky high school student who has just been asked out by the local big man on campus. She excitedly accepts and goes to a party he's holding. However, while there, her date leads his buddies in gang-raping her and branding her the school slut. Now, with nobody believing her and with no other recourse, Michelle dolls herself up and uses her newfound bad reputation to slash her way through everybody who's ruined her life.
Not to be confused with the Joan Jett song of the same name or the 2018 documentary about her.
This film contains examples of:
- Abusive Parents: Michelle's mother is emotionally abusive and seems to think that a black dress that goes past her knees and barely shows her back makes her look like a slut. When Michelle does get raped, she doesn't believe her.
- Adults Are Useless: Michelle's mother and the school's guidance counselor both blame her for what happened, the former overtly and the latter passive-aggressively. The sole police officer who appears also comes off as rather blasé in regards to Steve's death.
- Alpha Bitch: Aaron's girlfriend, Debbie.
- Badass Biker: Heather's Halloween costume.
- Beautiful All Along: When asking Michelle out, Aaron compares her to the nerdy girls whom this trope applies to, noting that
they looked great even when wearing frumpy clothes. - Beta Bitch: Heather, who is arguably even meaner than Alpha Bitch Debbie.
- Big Bad: Aaron Cussler led the gang rape of Michelle.
- The Can Kicked Him: Debbie has her face beaten against a toilet, which she is then drowned in.
- Cold-Blooded Torture: Jake, the most violent of Michelle's attackers, is tied up and tortured (including via Ass Shove) with objects like a lighter and pens.
- Downer Ending: Michelle goes completely insane in her vengeance quest, ultimately trying to kill the relatively innocent Wendy. Wendy has to kill her in self-defense, and the film ends with her crying over Michelle's corpse.
- Femme Fatale: Michelle decides to use seduction to get to her male targets before killing them. She would be The Vamp, but her victims deserved it.
- Greater-Scope Villain: Aaron's parents are corrupt corporate executives who lobby to allow more environmental damage in their business dealings, but they never show up and are irrelevant to the plot.
- Groin Attack: Michelle castrates Steve's post-mortem, burns Jake's genitals, and bites Aaron's off.
- Horror Doesn't Settle for Simple Tuesday: Halloween.
- Hot for Student: When Michelle goes to the guidance counselor about the bullying, he decides to hit on her.
- Impromptu Tracheotomy: Steve is stabbed in the neck.
- Jerk Jock: Aaron is a football player who has delusions of culture, is constantly in a tumultuous relationship with his girlfriend, and rapes people.
- Know-Nothing Know-It-All: Aaron loves to name-drop "high-class" authors like Henry Miller and Fyodor Dostoevsky despite only learning their names from Pop-Cultural Osmosis and art films that he confuses for porn.
- Machete Mayhem: Michelle sneaks a real machete into Aaron's Halloween party by pretending that it's a prop for her Jason Voorhees costume.
- Ms. Fanservice: Michelle becomes this after deciding to get her revenge, wearing various skimpy outfits, sometimes see-through.
- Shout-Out:
- Michelle is seen reading Tropic of Cancer in the opening scene.
- Aaron and one of his friends watch Henry and June, confusing it for a porno, and its star Uma Thurman is mentioned as also having starred in Kill Bill.
- Michelle wears a hockey mask to Aaron's Halloween party in the climax.
- Off with His Head!: Heather is decapitated with a machete.
- Roaring Rampage of Revenge: A high school girl is gang-raped and butchers the rapists after the authorities don't believe her.
- Slashed Throat: How Michelle finally dispatches Aaron.
- Slipping a Mickey: Aaron slips Michelle a roofie so he and his friends can gang-rape her. Michelle roofies everybody at Aaron's Halloween party to get him all to herself in the climax.
- Slut-Shaming: Aaron's girlfriend responds to Michelle being raped by taping her to a tree and writing "SLUT" on her forehead. This is just the beginning of a gigantic bullying campaign against her.
- Throw the Book at Them: A bound Jake is bludgeoned with a thick, heavy book.
- Token Good Teammate: The only decent person in the victim pool is Wendy, a Formerly Fat now-popular girl who tries and fails to stop Michelle's victimization, only relenting when she's threatened too. She ends up as the sole survivor.
- With Friends Like These...: The popular clique is prone to talking shit about its members behind their backs.
