Starring Maria Bakalova and Amandla Stenberg

Directed by Halina Reijn

A24, in cinemas now

A bunch of wealthy Generation Z-ers meet at a country mansion for a hurricane party and start to play a deadly game.

Early in 2022 I began my review for the excellent All My Friends Hate Me with the question, ‘When is a horror film not a horror film?’. Much the same could be said of Bodies Bodies Bodies which is, in many ways, a very similar, if far less successful, 90 minutes of (digital) celluloid.

Bodies starts in solid teen slasher mode. A clique of wealthy young friends – plus a couple of suspicious outsiders – meet to see out a hurricane in David’s family mansion. They are mostly spoiled, self-obsessed and intensely dislikeable so we’re just waiting for the most obnoxious of them to be bumped off. So far, so predictable, although this first act is undoubtedly well written and feels impressively fresh. The characterisations are convincing, and there’s a verité, indie schtick to the direction which builds up expectations for something a little out of the horror ordinary.
Sadly, as the movie progresses, this assured touch falls away and it starts to disintegrate into an incoherent mess.

The genre demands that the gang be picked off one by one (not a spoiler!) and, to be fair, writer Sarah Delappe and director Halina Reijn are clearly reaching for something more original, more conceptually challenging, but unfortunately they don’t have the nuts and bolts technique to give it the structural engine it needs to drive it forwards. As a result, after half an hour the movie loses focus. We have no idea who our central character is, or who we are supposed to be identifying with and rooting for. The action stalls at several key moments for lengthy, dialogue-heavy scenes, dependent on off-screen backstory we care little about. The tone shifts from teen slasher action to a satirical comedy of Gen Z manners – with earnest stop-offs to explore sexuality, race, class and mental illness. This hotch-potch of ingredients don’t sit well together. When the film returns to its original teen slasher genre, grinding towards its conclusion, the plot turns out to be little more than a shaggy dog story, and the audience have every right to feel cheated.

While some of the satirical stuff is funny and astute, it sits apart from the knife wielding framing device which makes for an inconsistent and bumpy narrative ride. Lacking pace and structure, despite the body count, the movie is never scary, and struggles to be in any way unsettling.

Bodies’ Brit-flick cousin All My Friends Hate Me (which tells a similar story, but with slightly older millennials and less violence) succeeds by never letting go of the genre it is exploiting, and by having a single clear focus on its central character. We care about Pete and we understand why his insecurities are best expressed through familiar horror tropes. In Bodies Bodies Bodies I was left thinking that the same observations could be made in a high school or college clique comedy, and it would have been more satisfying. The genre and thematic content seem uncomfortably at odds with each other.

Verdict: There are good things about this film – it’s not hard to see what it is trying to achieve – but by the end, Bodies Bodies Bodies feels like a worthy but unsuccessful prototype for better things to come from DeLappe and Heijn. 5/10

Martin Jameson