Movie Reaction: Bodies Bodies Bodies

Formula: (I Know What You Did Last Summer / Booksmart) ^ Very Bad Things

I’m moving into a generational danger zone. I was born in 1987 making me about as Millennial as it gets. Over the years, I’ve gotten used to the talking points on mine and previous generations. I laugh at Boomer nostalgia. I chuckle at how ineffectual Gen X has been. I rail against the “90s kid” nostalgia that plagues millennials. I have to be careful about the Zoomers though. When there’s commentary about Zoomers, I have to check myself to make sure I’m laughing at genuine critique and not a generational misunderstanding. Like when am I laughing at something about TikTok because it’s funny vs. when I’m laughing at it because I don’t understand it? That makes Bodies Bodies Bodies a relative minefield.

 

Bodies is a horror satire about Gen-Z culture. A group of mostly wealthy 20-somethings hang out in a secluded mansion during a hurricane for drugs and games until one of them turns up dead and the rest start turning on each other. It’s a dark comedy story type that never gets old. I mean, it’s basically The Thing but with a very different tone and setting. The satirical take is what keeps it fresh with healthy discussions with gaslighting, body dysmorphia, and other Gen-Z buzz words.

 

What did surprise me is that the movie is much more of a straight whodunnit than a comedy. The trailer puts the comedy front and center. I was a little concerned going in that it was going to be a bunch of pronoun jokes that people could laugh at for the wrong reasons as well as the right ones. It’s actually not that. Most of the jokes along those lines are in the trailer. The movie is much more interested in being tense and scary. Here’s the Catch-22 of it. I wish there was more of the satire in the movie, although I’m certain if it would’ve leaned into the satire more, it would’ve become insufferable. As is, most of the Gen-Z humor comes from a single character (Rachel Sennott’s Alice). The rest of the characters are pretty straightforward. I wish they would’ve spread the Gen-Z tropes to more of the characters. There are a couple big jokes they do give to characters late in the movie that fall flatter than they should, because until that point, those characters have been pretty normal.

 

As for the whodunit of it all. Consider this a spoiler but not really. Let me choose my words carefully. The nature of this whodunnit and the “who” in question feels pretty obvious early on and it impacts the way things play out [predictably] as a result. I was never that invested in the mystery of what was going on. I was interested in how it would play out, which is distinctly different. I wanted to know who would survive, not who did it. Given that it’s less of a comedy than advertised, that left the movie feeling empty. It’s the difference between a Knives Out and a Free Fire. Knives Out gets momentum from spending the whole movie trying to figure out the puzzle. Free Fire is about seeing how these idiots make a mess of things until they all die. Bodies isn’t that interested in solving the mystery, so I wish it would’ve played up the comedy of all the characters instead of focusing most of it on Sennott.

 

That’s a finer point that obscures my overall opinion of the movie though. It’s like how my Reaction for Ready or Not focused on how I wished it was even crazier than it was. Since then, I’ve embraced Ready or Not even more fully and love it. I liked Bodies Bodies Bodies. Most of that has to do with the cast. The two biggest names – Lee Pace and Pete Davidson – are actually the least impactful in the movie. Pace in particular is great at embodying the “old guy still hanging out with young people” type. The others in the cast made the biggest impression. Maria Bakalova surprised me a lot. This is only the third thing I’ve seen her in. The Borat sequel and The Bubble were both broader, comic roles with a lot of assurance. In Bodies, she’s very different. Nervous, overwhelmed, and timid. I’ll be honest. I thought her Oscar nomination was a Covid-impacted fluke/perfect role at the perfect time. She showed real range in this though, and I think she’s going to stick around for a while. Amanda Stenberg really has fun playing a more barbed character for a change. Myha’la Herrold too after a couple seasons in the business world trappings of Industry. Raechel Sennott and Chase Sui Wonders play arguably the most entitled Zoomers in the movie, and they do it well. The fact that the cast do feel like a fractured tight-knit group (mostly) is what keeps this movie interesting. I felt like I knew the relationship between every character. In other words, this fits perfectly into the “wind a bunch of characters up, put them in a room together, and see what happens” structure that I tend to love.

 

Bodies Bodies Bodies is better than my most pessimistic fears about Zoomer soundbites, but it’s not as darkly or sharply funny as I’d hoped either. The filmmakers are effective at building the atmosphere and directing the performers. There’s just a little confusion about the tone it wants to take or how much it wants to lean into the comedy and suspense.  

 

Verdict: Weakly Recommend

 

After the Credits

It was clear to me pretty early that there was no killer. Is that just me? Especially when they killed Lee Pace so early. Had it been a movie where we were really supposed to be concerned with the killer’s identity, we wouldn’t see Pace’s murder so early in the film. Sure, Peter Davidson dying was a mystery. With the amount of drugs and the specific nature of his death, there was always room for it to be an accident. Then the first and arguably best suspect, Lee Pace, gets killed next in a completely unmysterious way? The third death, Chase Sui Wonders dying from falling down the stairs when most characters are drugged up is suspicious but also not clearly a murder.

 

That leads me back to my point about the film not picking a tone. There’s the version of this that’s all about finding the killer. That version should lean more into the mysteriousness of the deaths and suspicious activity from all the characters. Or there’s the version that would’ve played up the comedy. It could’ve played its hand earlier and made it clear that they were in danger because they’re idiots, not because there actually was a killer. Kind of like the college students in Tucker and Dale vs. Evil. That would’ve allowed them to play on each character’s Gen-Z or rich kid flaw. I think I would’ve preferred the latter option, but either one would’ve played better. I don’t think either option would’ve had to step on the big punchline at the end when they find out how Davidson actually died.