Bodies Bodies Bodies: Gen Z Myopic Slasher
Put a group of wealthy, narcissistic Gen Z friends in a large, remote estate filled with drugs and staircases in the middle of a hurricane and see what your outcome is.
Halina Reijn’s vicious protagonists find themselves in a deadly situation but it is not the killer that gets them, it is themselves.
Two young lovers, Sophie and Bee, journey to meet Sophie’s best friends on a weekend trip upstate. Sophie’s nihilistic friend group consists of jealous David, his whiney girlfriend Emma, the aggressive Jordan, aloof Alice, and her older boyfriend Greg.
It seems like it's going to be a good weekend off the grid catching up with friends through impromptu dance parties and weed-induced chocolate cake until Sophie unexpectedly arrives with an unknown Bee and the friends start to go for the jugular with one another. To continue the hostility of the night, the group decides to play Bodies Bodies Bodies and iPhone flashlights and fingers are pointed all night to decipher who is capable of actual murder.
Sarah DeLappe’s script explores the lack of original thought attributed to Gen Z through their use of buzzwords. The screenplay does not hold back in its hate for these characters. The reason this film works so well in its targeting of Gen Z is that the dialogue feels authentic. It is not afraid to go there with its own characters and uses language creatively as a weapon. DaLappe fills the script with pop culture references from “creative non-fiction” to the art of building a successful podcast. She understands the language of the socially aware Gen Z filled with virtue signaling, performative activism, and psychoanalysis. The group scenes are integral to keeping the story alive in figuring out who is the murderer. Each argument resembles a day spent on Twitter, hurling insults back and forth with no actual progress being accomplished. They are more set on correcting one another than the issue at stake.
It is not a parody of a generation, they are real people facing the stake of life or death. The success of the story really belongs to its all-star cast from the energetic Rachel Sennott to the consistent Amandla Sternberg. The male leads Pete Davidson and Leep Pace round out the cast and let the females take the stage. Everyone embodies their character and makes the dialogue flow so naturally and adds bits of improv that make the performances even more convincing.
Rejin’s use of smartphones gives more access to the characters and who they are. Each character uses a phone for a different purpose, from a flashlight to googling the new girl. Phones are present in the unraveling of the relationships at the center of the plot. It also adds to the cinematic design and suspense. The primary light in the dark estate is the phone flashlight. The shadows conceal dark secret and the glare of the spotlight catch characters in an animalistic state. Rejin uses light and shadows to create a beautiful space where no one is safe. This does not look like your typical horror movie.
One by one the bodies literally hit the floor and each murder leads to a new revelation of the hysteric, narcissistic myopia we live in with an ending that will leave you in shock.