Bodies Bodies Bodies

MA15+ 2022 - Horror/Comedy ‧ 1h 35m

When a group of rich 20-somethings plan a hurricane party at a remote family mansion, a party game turns deadly in this fresh and funny look at backstabbing, fake friends, and one party gone very, very wrong.

Release date: 15 September 2022

Official Trailer

86% TOMATOMETER
69% AUDIENCE SCORE

Review

A slasher set-up is turned on its head in director Halina Reijn's satire, writes JAKE WILSON - The Age Digital Edition. To subscribe, visit "https://www.theage.com.au".

The problematic phrase " guilty pleasure' ' will just about do for Halina Reijn's Bodies Bodies Bodies, the kind of horror parody so edgy it practically slices and dices itself. Despite all the posturing, and partly because of it, I had a fairly good time - and was even left with a few things to think about.

The set-up is slasher 101. A group of friends in their early 20s are staying at an isolated mansion, with a hurricane on the way. They pass the time by playing a murder mystery game, leading to the inevitable moment when the lights go out and the danger becomes real.

This premise allows scope for a couple of nods to Dario Argento's Suspiria, via glow-inthe-dark bracelets and a tinkling musical-box motif in the score. But Reijn and screenwriter Sarah DeLappe use the genre mainly as a basis for satire, with characters bent on wounding each other verbally rather than physically.

By design, most of these characters are privileged by almost any standard - though, just as pointedly, they're not all white and straight. The exception to the rule of wealth is also the sole non-American , the unassuming Bee (Bulgarian expatriate Maria Bakalova, breakout star of the recent Borat sequel).

Bee's childlike intentness may mask a few of her own secrets, but mainly we're aligned with her outsider perspective, presumably shared to some extent by Reijn, a Dutch director in her 40s making her English language debut.

The script's immediate irony is that everyone has a victim card or two up their sleeves to be played when it suits their purpose.

The characters trade accusations such as " you're so toxic'' , and wear their insecurities proudly. Even the extroverts yearn to be seen as sensitive artists: Alice (Rachel Sennott) devotes herself to her podcast, while Bee's girlfriend Sophie (Amandla Stenlen) pens " creative nonfiction' ' like Lena Dunham's character in Girls.

The second-level irony is that some of these characters really do wind up as victims, albeit in a way they couldn't have foreseen. Nor does it seem accidental that the two men in the largely female cast are the lanky Pete Davidson (as the obnoxious David, whose absent parents own the mansion) and the strapping Lee Pace (as Alice's much older Tinder boyfriend). Wherever the whodunit plot might be headed, the sight of these two guys towering over their co-stars leaves no doubt which of these characters would be the most likely to pose a real-world physical threat.

The notion that all these characters can be seen as literal " bodies' ' is one possible implication of the ambiguous title, though the possibilities are carried nowhere near as far as they could have if the film were truly prepared to go to town with transgressive sex and gore.

In the end, Reijn takes a safer tack - letting us feel we've been looking all along at a bunch of scared kids, who despite their bravado can't yet be safely left unsupervised by adults.

Impeccably cast and smartly written, Bodies Bodies Bodies is an uncommonly well-done whodunit.