Bodies Bodies Bodies

I came about watching this movie in a roundabout way. It was written and directed by Halina Reijn who also did the more recent "Babygirl" with Nicole Kidman. That one is a bit of a strange character study but I found it worthwhile. So I found "Bodies Bodies Bodies" on BluRay at my public library. Which surprised me.

I did not come away with a high opinion of this movie. First off, it starts with a very close-up shot of two 20-something young ladies locked in a minute's worth of French kiss lip-lock. If you assume that the opening scene of a movie sets the stage for what else is to come, it did not appeal to this 70-something grandfather.

It turns out the two of them were driving to a rather remote home (filmed in upstate New York) where a group of mostly 20-something guys and gals had a weekend party planned while the owner, the father of one of them, was gone.

What happens after all the participants are there doesn't make much sense and isn't entertaining. They decide to play a game in the dark, it is called "bodies bodies bodies" and it is a bit confusing. But it does set the stage for a dead friend being found, then another, then another. Mostly because assumptions, wrong assumptions, were being made.

In addition, the dialog is very poor and most characters curse constantly which may just be a feature of today's 20-somethings, but it got old quickly and took away greatly from what might have been interesting elements of the story.

My BluRay player has a very useful feature, a +15 second button, so I could get through the long, tedious sections more quickly without losing content.

No, not a good movie at all, from my perspective.

Not every story needs a hero and it can be refreshing when the characters are a little more "real" and grounded. But it's more difficult to write characters that are jerks that you still want to follow. Bodies Bodies Bodies is aware that the entire group of people they've centred the movie around are terrible people. It's not a blunder or something the creative team overlooked, but I'm not sure why they made that choice. Is the entire point that young people suck? That's fine... but other than the fact they're rich and are snorting and smoking everything in sight, they don't go about it in an amusing way. The movie is trying to crack jokes but it fails at that as well. You don't need heroic or even likeable characters but it forces the story to do even more heavy lifting to hold your attention.

Bodies is a movie where it isn't easy to separate the actors from their characters. I've already talked about how this movie is intentionally populated by vapid and annoying characters. This choice also makes it harder to distinguish between a badly written character or a mishandled performance. If I had to pick a member of the cast that was the most impressive, I'd go with Amandla Stenberg playing the emotionally vulnerable Sophie. She's grown up a lot since her appearance in The Hunger Games and with her character drying out and trying to stay sober, she did a good job being erratic and unpredictable. I liked Maria Bakalova so much in Borat Subsequent, she's just fine here. It's not a comedic role but she didn't have the same spark she showed previously. If there was someone who got on my nerves, Pete Davidson's character David was extra snarky and annoying but I couldn't really distinguish if that was just the character or something he was putting on top of it.

The only defence I can really muster for Bodies is that the central mystery was interesting enough to sustain me through all of the dead air. With all the characters unable to properly process due to the illicit substances and the hurricane raging outside, it could have been anyone and that's properly played up. The reveal is unique but it's also fitting as it kind of fizzles out like most of the tension. I'll give them credit for being creative but I just kind of shrugged as we hit the closing credits.

I've seen worse than Bodies Bodies Bodies but I don't get why there was such huge hype from the critics. Bodies isn't scary and there's only so much tension and excitement to be gleaned from the premise. The acting was fine but it was also hampered by the characters being so self-absorbed and hard to like. While the twist is kind-of new, it didn't mean much and I was still left disappointed that I sunk an hour and a half into this. I'm giving it a 5/10 and I'm probably being generous. We're getting much better thrillers and horror movies more frequently now, you're better off checking out one of those.

This was enjoyable from start to finish, and I don't get the negative reviews, particularly those whining about Gen Z; this isn't just Gen Z, it's any group of rich kids having a party that goes very wrong in any generation, with the same behaviors and reactions any of them would have exhibited in any generation, of course with minor differences. So enough about that.

I also did not expect a typical slasher movie when I started watching this, and the marketing I saw didn't depict it that way, so I don't get the whining about it not being a slasher movie or even a horror movie; it does fall into that genre though, so enough about that.

The actors are smart and behave like real people, and the story is clever, especially the twist at the end. There are no dull moments unless you aren't interested in character development or storyline, so in that case go watch Friday the 13th and leave this film for the rest of us who can appreciate it.

Anyone reviewing this as vapid and shallow and claims it has a predictable ending is missing the entire point of the film.

The characters are of course absurdist representations of not only current youth but also humanity as a whole.

This is not meant to be a horror film that reinvents the wheel. It's meant to be a discussion of how we as a culture have warped our relationship with information, specifically technologically. It's meant to represent how we gather and receive unsound information, react impulsively, and create destruction while doing so, whether to ourselves or others. Understandably, the movie isn't TOO heavy handed in its approach as to not come across as preachy, but I think the message is clear and the film conveys it in a way that's fun and entertaining. I mean, come on, it's A24. If you're showing up expecting a by the books slasher, you've come to the wrong place. I think that's more of an expectation setting problem than it should be a knock at the film.

Because the way things are these days, I'm still not sure if this was taking the mick out of gen-z or not. It is so on the nose that you think it must be but, then again, things are often beyond parody these days, so I'm not convinced. Compared to most modern films of this type it was very watchable and not too obvious what was about to happen next. I would recommend a watch if you have time.

If it was taking the mick out of gen z, it was a good effort, but so much of this is included in modern films, without jest, that I'm really on the fence about it. Giving benefit of the doubt, I've gone 6/10.