Worth: $18.00
FilmInk rates movies out of $20 — the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth
Cast:
Amandla Stenberg, Maria Bakalova, Myha’la Herrold, Chase Sui Wonders, Rachel Sennott, Lee Pace, Pete Davidson
Intro:
… skewers for (and quite literally skewers) a younger crowd, but its infectious humour and blunt-instrument satire are more than enough to make it a rollicking bloody ride.
Dutch director and actor Halina Reijn’s first English language feature Bodies Bodies Bodies is a searing satire of Gen Z mores, but foremost an of-the-moment comedy that relishes in its slasher/mystery genre tropes to deliver a laugh out loud experience designed to make the audience squirm during both its comedic and horror moments.
The set-up is familiar; a group of people are gathered in a remote mansion on the eve of a massive storm. The group, if they can even be called that by the end, is made up of mostly privileged young people who delight in backstabbing each other. The odious David (Pete Davidson) is the host. David’s actress girlfriend Emma (Chase Sui Wonders), oversharing podcaster, Alice (a knockout Rachel Sennott), Alice’s Gen X Tinder boyfriend, Greg (Lee Pace), and Type-A personality, Jordan (Myha’la Herrold) round out the group who are surprised when the unreliable Sophie (Amandla Stenberg) brings her new girlfriend, Bee (Maria Bakalova) to the party.
Sophie’s presence is resented by most of the group. She’s recently out of rehab, is Jordan’s ex-girlfriend, and it seems her biggest sin is that she doesn’t respond enough in the group chats. Bee and Greg are the only people there who aren’t from wealthy families and they’re both outsiders; Bee partially because she is clearly foreign, and Greg because he’s too old to understand exactly what is going on.
Unlike many other satires pointing the finger at rich people, Bodies Bodies Bodies allows that money can also belong to queer and non-white people.
The group is alcohol and cocaine fuelled (the exception being the now sober Sophie) and ready to party. They film TikTok videos (poor Greg trying his best to fit in) before the storm hits. There’s a sense that the group would find any excuse to party, so one built around a weather phenomena doesn’t seem out of place. To allay some of the constant bickering at the party, Sophie suggests playing a game called Bodies Bodies Bodies (a variation of Murder in the Dark) and it isn’t long until people start dropping dead for real.
The idea that there is a real killer in their midst reveals how paper-thin most of the relationships between the characters are. Everyone’s a suspect, even though only the absent and mysterious Max seems to have a motive. Rejin delights in injecting the DNA of other self-aware slasher movies into the film; there are definitive nods to Wes Craven’s Scream. The film also serves as an Agatha Christie styled whodunit, but there are no wise detectives around to sort out what’s going on, just a bunch of increasingly paranoid buzzword spouting characters who have a history of messing with each other.
Reijn and cinematographer Jasper Wolf make the most out of the single location mystery. When the storm knocks out the power, the film is mostly lit by iPhones and day-glow jewellery. The sprawling mansion becomes a maze and is discombobulating for both the viewers and the characters. The entire production design is handsome and effective and amps up the tension where necessary. Disasterpeace’s score works in perfect tandem with the visual aesthetic.
Working from a script written by Sarah DeLappe from a treatment devised by Kristen Roupenian (author of the wildly popular New Yorker story ‘Cat Person’), Reijn’s film ticks a lot of boxes for its “nowness”, which proved a small challenge to the forty-six-year-old director for whom the generation she’s portraying can be seen as a baffling ‘other country’ to people who aren’t terminally online. The dialogue is snappy, funny, but littered with Twitter-speak. Terms like ally, gaslighting, enabler, red flag are thrown around freely and they land with comedic certainty. The level of self-involvement that the characters display is enough for the audience to be quietly (if guiltily) rooting for their deaths and it’s a testament to the ensemble cast that they pull off all of it so convincingly.
Although some of the characterisations are paper-thin, they work in terms of what the film is trying to get across. The majority of the group may have known each other for a long time but they really don’t know each other and certainly don’t trust each other. The dynamic between them is biting but also relatable. A character imploring “check her texts” as they die is a contemporary tragicomedy. The final twist works because it shows how much the characters rely on external social media validation for their otherwise weirdly empty lives.
Bravura performances by Sennott, Bakalova, and Stenberg add electricity to an already zapping film. Bodies Bodies Bodies will no doubt engender a series of its own catchphrases (“He’s a Libra Moon!”) and although the movie does risk a use by date because it is so right now, it’s more likely to sit in the pantheon the of comedy/horror works it pays tribute to.
Bodies Bodies Bodies is a riotously good time that mixes social commentary and genre with ease. There are enough blood-soaked kills for the horror hounds, a compelling mystery angle, and razor-sharp writing that translates incredibly well when it comes out of the mouths of the talented cast. Reijn’s film skewers for (and quite literally skewers) a younger crowd, but its infectious humour and blunt-instrument satire are more than enough to make it a rollicking bloody ride.
