COVID-19 has had a wide range of impacts upon the world. Massive deaths and casualties; sweeping unemployment and terminating whole businesses; increase in poverty, disparity in access and education, wearing masks, preponderance of hand sanitizers, disruption of socialization, and on and on. It has also impacted entertainment, and not just in a significant uptick in cringe-inducing celebrity sing-a-longs — plural (and their parodies). Many film productions were disrupted, put on hold, or out-right canceled due to the pandemic. Others suddenly found themselves rewritten to take place in a single, closed off setting making it easier to follow required safety protocols. There was a rise of documentaries being made, as it rarely requires a big production crew to conduct interviews, do research, or shoot footage with one or two cameras.
There was also a significant number of titles related to time-loops across genres, about people stuck repeating the same day watched by folks wearing the same sweatpants they’ve been wearing all week. Or the many works that explored a multiverse, a world where things were just different enough to offer an escape. But a certain theme wasn’t pervasive as one could expect: the paranoid thriller where everyone is a suspect. This is the mood and approach that permeates director Halina Reijn’s BODIES BODIES BODIES, adding to its other merits to make it a particularly interesting film of the moment.
To be certain, narrative filmmaking tends to be the slowest to react to societal changes and trends (that’s right: Paul Schrader is wrong about the immediacy in which ‘70s films addressed the sociopolitical topics of the day; I’m coming for you, Schrader!). So perhaps we shall see this theme increase in the near future. But, at the peak of a time when anyone could be a carrier of a deadly disease (and not even know it)—not to mention the undeniable proof of systemic corruption of politicians that wanted to appear noble; police officers who “seem like nice guys” but who have a long history of murdering, abusing, and harassing BIPOC; the shocking amount of folks (including elected officials) who revealed they are, overall, pretty okay with Nazis as long as the term wasn’t used; corporate greed in flaunting display as economies sink but the obscenely rich get obscenely richer; or the fact that a bunch of civilians were whipped up enough to fall for an obvious lie and commit insurrection…for over the past two years, people have been given excuse after excuse not to trust each other. But that hasn’t really been reflected in most cinema. BenDavid Grabinski’s HAPPILY (2021) invoked some of this, as did SCREAM (2022), but there weren’t many movies that directly pointed out how much fodder there was in society for folks to turn on each other, no matter how well they knew one another (this of course doesn’t count the far too many far-right conspiracy documentaries because they are trash and not in the good way).
The closest hint at this (at least subconscious) paranoia could be found in one of the most popular bits of entertainment over the past two years—the video game Among Us where, in true JOHN CARPENTER’S THE THING-like fashion, a group of players are infiltrated by a murderous alien pretending to be human while murdering and sabotaging missions. Until now with Reijn’s BODIES BODIES BODIES, a claustrophobic movie brimming with distrust, betrayal, hysterics, and death. At the Q&A, the director revealed that the main thrust of the project was the type of board games like Werewolf, Secret Hitler, Resistance, Mafia, and the like where one or more people are working against the group in secret. But the writers weren’t on stage to discuss this as well, so it’s possible there were other inspirations at work.
BODIES BODIES BODIES centers on a group of privileged friends getting together at the expansive mansion of the insanely rich parents of David (Pete Davidson). Sophie (Amandla Stenberg) brings along her new girlfriend Bee (Maria Bakalova) into this secluded soiree where Bee doesn’t know anyone. She is quickly introduced to the gang. Alice (Rachel Sennott) is the activist/podcaster who has brought along a seemingly dim boyfriend (Lee Pace), Emma (Chase Sui Wonders) is the actress and mostly disinterested girlfriend of David, and Jordan (Myha’la Herrold) who is immediately apprehensive about Sophie’s presence and skeptical about the return of the prodigal daughter.
The gang decides to play the titular game in which one person is secretly a murderer and the others must discern which one of them is the hidden killer. Things go awry, as they often do, and the corpses pile up. The shrinking number of survivors start turning on each other, old grudges and buried secrets come to light as the victims litter the palatial grounds. Are these accidents like some claim? Is someone taking the game too far? Is there someone else infiltrating the party to pick off this group who are too busy turning on each other to perceive an outside threat?
BODIES BODIES BODIES is an incredibly fun horror/comedy with suspicions constantly shifting and feigning towards horror tropes. Is it a HIGH TENSION situation with a murderer suffering from dissociative identity disorder? One of those ‘80s slashers where the killer is revealed to be some random that has a connection to the main characters but isn’t very well explored (FRIDAY THE 13TH: A NEW BEGINNING, THE PROWLER)? From a script by Kristen Roupenian, Sarah DeLappe, Chloe Okuno, Joshua Sharp, and Aaron Jackson, Reijn’s film ultimately plays like a mix of YOU’RE NEXT, APRIL FOOL’S DAY (1986), LADYWORLD, and DONKEY PUNCH thanks to a mixture of mostly female cast, single location, and spiraling levels of in-fighting and resultant body count. There is a nice mix of character-based humor thrown into the hysterics of the situation that informs the relationships as well as lures audiences into letting their guard down just long enough for a new corpse to pop up.
The cast is firing on all cylinders, even if they are mostly playing variations on stock types (the woke ally, the outsider audience surrogate, the privileged dick, the militant lesbian, etc.). Everyone gets a moment to hold court and show a wide range of emotions from hurt, to anger, to confusion, and betrayal. Not only does this help muddy the waters of who is the suspect, but subtly creates more complete personalities with multiple sides to them. While none of the deaths are particularly gruesome, and are telegraphed a bit too much, they still have a strong impact because of how shocking they are to the other characters. Some of the characters are meant to be particularly annoying in their whining or vacillating allegiances, but it’s to the actors’ credits that these folks are so frequently grating as that indicates an excellent (albeit irritating) performance.
The main drawbacks to BODIES BODIES BODIES is its ending and an indulgence in a recent horror trope that I do not believe will age well. Reijn’s conclusion isn’t bad or such a departure from the previously set-up story that it retroactively ruins the movie, but it feels like a pulled punch that should have ended with more of a bang than whimper. It’s a wink of an ending when it should’ve been a barbaric yawp. The other issue is something that has been happening a lot in genre films of the past three years or so, wherein a character uses “woke-speak” (for lack of a better term) in situations that are inappropriate for such measured language. These characters are always meant to be laughed at as they say words like “gaslighting,” “toxic”, “triggering”, “ally”, and more; the joke being that such overly sensitive (and theoretically policed) language is useless when met with gruesome reality and thus the person is ridiculous for adhering to the social decorum of Leftist Twitter and TikTok. It’s not that the idea itself is bad or unfunny, it just seems like it will not age well but become akin to hippie/new age lingo jokes that littered ‘70s genre staples and feel like awkward caricatures written by people observing from the outside and going for low-hanging fruit. Perhaps this will still be relevant decades from now, but it is an overused trend at the moment that certainly feels like it has a shelf life that may be approaching faster than folks think.
BODIES BODIES BODIES sails on tonal control, brilliant performances, and a well cultivated sense of shifting suspicions. The mixture of pop songs (before power goes out) and Disasterpeace’s score enriches the dichotomy of privileged partying with impending death, while Jasper Wolf’s cinematography uses the actual light sources of the characters (phones, flashlights, candles) to underscore how much danger can be hidden in the darkness. It would’ve been nice to have a stronger ending and to avoid a trope in its ascent, but even those misfires aren’t enough to derail Reijn’s exceptionally entertaining dive into a world of paranoia where everyone is a suspect because everyone has something to hide.
Tags: Aaron Jackson, Amandla Stenberg, Among Us, April Fool's Day, BenDavid Grabinski, Bodies Bodies Bodies, Chase Sui Wonders, Chloe Okuno, Disasterpeace, Donkey Punch, Film Festival, Film Festivals, Friday The 13th: A New Beginning, Happily, Helina Reijn, High Tension, Horror Comedy, Jasper Wolf, john carpenter, Joshua Sharp, Kristen Roupenian, Ladyworld, Lee Pace, Mafia, Maria Bakalova, Myha'la Herrold, Pete Davidson, Rachel Sennott, Resistance, Sarah DeLappe, Scream, Secret Hitler, SXSW, SXSW 2022, The Prowler, The Thing, Werewolf, You're Next
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