I saw the MA15+ Rated American black comedy horror film
'BODIES BODIES BODIES' earlier this week at my local multiplex, as Directed by the Dutch Actress, Writer and film maker Halina Reijn in her English language debut, and only her second feature film after
'Instinct' in 2019. The film saw its World Premier screening at the South by Southwest Film Festival in mid-March this year before its release in the US from early August, having so far taken US$13M at the Box Office and generated largely positive reviews.
The films opens up with a close up shot of Bee (Maria Bakalova), a working class young woman from somewhere in Eastern Europe, engaged in a very passionate kiss with her wealthy girlfriend Sophie (Amandla Stenberg). Soon enough the pair are travelling in Sophie's SUV to the home of David (Pete Davidson) Sophie's childhood friend whose father is the owner of the lavish mansion hidden away in the woods for a 'Hurricane Party'. The other guests are David himself and his girlfriend and aspiring actress Emma (Chase Sui Wonders), a podcaster named Alice (Rachel Sennott) and her forty year old boyfriend Greg (Lee Pace) and Jordan (Myha'la Herrold). Max (Conner O'Malley), another guest, left the night before after getting into a fight with David.
After spending the afternoon and early evening getting high on drink, drugs and dancing, the hurricane blows in and so the gathered guests decide to play a game of 'Bodies, Bodies, Bodies' - a murder in the dark kind of game. The initial game comes to an abrupt halt when Greg announces that he is going off to bed early and David leaves after an altercation with Emma. The hurricane starts to take hold and suddenly all the lights go out and the power supply is lost. Bee subsequently finds David outside under the verandah in the pouring rain with his throat slashed open and a bloodied Gurkha machete knife close by. En masse the girls all run to Sophie's car to alert the local authorities but find that her car battery is dead, so their not going anywhere, and they have no signal on any of their mobile phones to call in 911.
Greg is suspected as being David's killer and so the group go up to his room to confront him, expecting to find him asleep. But his bed is empty. They search the room for clues as to his possible whereabouts and come across a survival kit containing a map of the local area with a red circle drawn around the estate, and a knife, amongst a back pack containing all manner of other survival type gear. The girls eventually track down Greg on the floor of the gym sleeping wearing a UV face mask with his ear buds in, which explains why he didn't hear them when they were calling out his name. They confront him with various weapons, including his own knife, and after realising they are serious with their accusations towards him, he returns their hostile attitude. Following a struggle, Bee hits him over the head from behind with a kettle bell, not once, but twice, just to ensure that he is dead, and he is! The group further discuss Greg and doubt that he was the killer and Emma surmises that Max, who had confessed feelings for Emma, in fact returned to kill David. Sophie, a sober addict, relapses. Emma kisses her, to Sophie's chagrin, before accepting drugs. Alice later finds Emma dead at the bottom of the stairs, and believes the group is being killed off one by one. Jordan and Alice cast their doubts about the validity of Bee's background, revealing that no one with her name is on record as having graduated from her college, and so they force Bee out of the house and into the gale force winds and torrential rain.
Taking shelter from the pouring rain and howling wind in Sophie's car, Bee while searching for something dry and warm to wear finds underwear that matches Jordan's bra in the backseat. She goes back to the house looking to gain entry and sees Jordan holding David's father's revolver through a conservatory window. She then crawls back into the mansion through a dog door. Bee then confronts the group, stating that she dropped out of college after one semester to take care of her ailing mother, who has borderline personality disorder. An angry verbal fight breaks out between the group. Jordan, revealed to have been the 'murderer' in the Bodies Bodies Bodies game, expresses bitterness for Sophie due to her drug addiction and using David to get access to her trust fund, and claims Sophie cheated on Bee with Jordan. Sophie says why she would not date Jordan, that she avoids her friends because their behaviour challenges her sobriety, and reveals that Jordan only really 'hate-listens' to Alice's podcast. After Alice responds by insulting Jordan's insecurities, Jordan shoots Alice in the leg, and then points the gun at Sophie. A struggle for the gun follows resulting in Alice being fatally shot in the throat. As Sophie and Jordan fight, Bee pushes Jordan over the staircase bannister, with her crashing onto a glass table on the ground floor. With her dying breath, Jordan fires off the remaining rounds of the gun and tells Bee to check Sophie's text messages. Bee runs and hides from Sophie.
As daylight breaks through the next morning and the hurricane has blown over Sophie tearfully confesses to Bee that she relapsed and witnessed Emma falling down the stairs to her death. However, Bee holds her at gunpoint, demanding to see her texts. Sophie tosses her phone away and they struggle, inadvertently picking up David's phone in the process, which shows that David accidentally slashed his own throat trying to use the Gurkha machete knife to open a Champagne bottle for a TikTok video, so revealing that there never was a real murderer. As Bee and Sophie realise the night's bloodshed was all in vain, a confused Max returns to the mansion, sees the corpse of David and asks what happened here? To which the girls turn to each other with a stunned expression on their faces as the power comes back on, and Bee's mobile phone starts pinging, stating that she now has reception. Alleluia!
I have to say that in
'Bodies Bodies Bodies' if this microcosm of the young adulthood in the third decade of the 21st Century is anything to go by, then we are all doomed. Forget climate change, forget financial crisis, forget wars and political unrest, forget COVID because this group of wealthy, nihilistic, self-centred, over privileged drug and alcohol addled social-media wannabe twenty somethings are indeed a force to be reckoned with . . . and all for the wrong reasons! But maybe that's the point that Director Halina Reijn is trying to make, and in that respect she succeeds on all levels. The dialogue is quick witted, sharp and right out of the Gen Z dictionary, with aspects of social commentary coming to the fore upended with plenty of blood and gore and a rising body count, and the cast of young actors here land their roles well enough, but this film for me failed to land as either a horror or a comedy. It's all style over substance which may suit the Gen Z demographic this film is undoubtedly aimed at, but for this older film goer, I'm looking for something more!
'Bodies Bodies Bodies' merits three claps of the Odeon Online clapperboard from a potential five claps.
-Steve, at Odeon Online-
