While Laura finalizes last-minute wedding details, Kyle is away in Las Vegas celebrating his bachelor party with four friends—real estate agent Robert, mechanic Charles, and brothers Adam and Michael.
After these events and being named a beneficiary of Adam and Lois's estate, Kyle breaks down and confesses the real story to Laura, who demands that her dream wedding proceed as planned.
Laura demands Kyle bury Robert's body in the desert and instructs him to tie up loose ends by killing Charles.
As Laura watches Kyle with the two boys, it hits her that her life and dreams are totally ruined, prompting her to have a nervous breakdown in which she runs out of the house and collapses screaming in the street.
[10][11][12][13] In a review that awarded 1 star out of 4, Roger Ebert said the film "[attempts] to exploit black humor without the control of tone necessary to pull it off.
"[10] Ebert complimented Slater's performance as well as Diaz’s character and said while the film "isn't bad on the technical and acting level", it is undermined by a pervasive cynicism--"the assumption that an audience has no moral limits and will laugh at cruelty simply to feel hip.
It offers but a single paltry treasure in recompense: the cheery image of Cameron Diaz pounding Christian Slater's head in with a hat rack.
"[11] Kenneth Turan of the Los Angeles Times said, "Unfortunately, writer-director Berg and his cast are much too pleased with themselves for having gone oh so far, being oh so daring, for any of them to realize just presenting a situation is not an end in itself.
"[12] Marc Savlov of The Austin Chronicle wrote, "The comic moments revolve almost exclusively around pain and violence and degradation, and though that may work well enough in more cerebral films (the Belgian Man Bites Dog comes to mind), here it's simply too much of a very bad thing...There is a line between gallows humor and tastelessness, but Very Bad Things apparently doesn't have a clue where that might be.
"[14] In a positive review, Maitland McDonagh of TV Guide wrote, "In a world filled with crude movie sitcoms, Berg's bitter, worst-possible-case scenario really does stand alone".
"[16] In Daily Grindhouse, Preston Fassel praised the film as a critique of bro culture, writing "it’s the perfect deconstruction of the responsibility-free bro-comedy, a movie that looks at the real-life consequences of so much 'innocent' bad behavior," comparing its philosophy to the "Homer's Enemy" episode of The Simpsons and calling it "the brilliant anti-comedy we need today.