Now available on VOD services like Amazon Prime Video, pitch-black comedy Bodies Bodies Bodies shows us What’s Next for two incredibly talented young funnywomen: Maria Bakalova, who nabbed an Oscar nomination by stealing Borat: Subsequent Moviefilm from beneath Sacha Baron Cohen. And Rachel Sennott, who made one of 2020’s best, most overlooked films, Shiva Baby, a hardened comedy diamond with razor-sharp edges. Here, they’re part of an ensemble of 20-whatevers whose drunken murder-mystery game becomes much more than just a game – it becomes some hard, pipe-hittin’ political-generational commentary from A24.
BODIES BODIES BODIES: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
The Gist: Bee (Bakalova) and Sophie (Amandla Stenberg) face-mash, with tongue, in the woods. Sophie confesses: “I love you,” and Bee hesitates. Their relationship is still a little fresh, and Bee seems a little gun-shy, but it’s a sweet moment nonetheless and then there’s a sudden edit and they’re in the car furiously tap-tap-tapping on their phones. That’s our cue to raise an eyebrow – they connect with each other and then they so very urgently have to connect with the rest of the world.
There’s a disconnect between them, though. Bee’s a working-class young woman who’s close with her mother – that’s who she was texting. Sophie is stupidly rich and probably went to an Ivy League school and has never driven anything less than a Range Rover. Is this something love can overcome? We’ll see. Bee’s nervous because she’s meeting Sophie’s friends for the first time, at an absurdly huge mansion, behind a gate and far from civilization. They’re holing up with booze and drugs and junk food and an absurd amount of flashlights for the hurricane that’s on the horizon. There is no evacuation plan. I guess if it gets really bad, they can take shelter in the indoor basketball court.
Roll call: The house belongs to David (Pete Davidson), Sophie’s oldest friend; he’s kind of an ass. He’s dating Emma (Chase Sui Wonders), an actress; she’s about had it with David. Jordan (Myha’la Herrold, from Industry) is a tough-on-the-exterior type; she seems to be trying to get between Bee and Sophie and wreak a little havoc. Alice (Sennot) is an anything-goes loose nut who brought an older goofball guy, Greg (Lee Pace), with her; she parties loud and hard and he, well, he’s new around here so if anything happens, he should be accused first. Bee observes, and cautiously participates, and also learns that Sophie has had some personal troubles. And then the storm really bears down.
The odd dynamic among this group is lubricated when everyone agrees to play Bodies Bodies Bodies, a party game that involves creeping around in the darkened mansion with a flashlight while one of the players “kills” one of the other players, and when the lights go up, the accusations fly. The game doesn’t begin until everyone sits in a circle and slaps each other, hard, on the face, successively, then pounds some liquor, and the only reason I can see for this ritual is to rile up some tension and all but guarantee that the game ends with someone in tears. As the game and its participants wind up, there’s the slow realization that everyone here is a f—ing jerk. As expected, everyone’s kinda wasted and something happens and someone ends up bleeding out. But as these things go, it’s hard to tell who’s the biggest f—ing jerk in a roomful of f—ing jerks.
What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Bodies Bodies Bodies is an A24-style “elevated horror” version of Clue. It’s also a spiritual cousin to Game Night.
Performance Worth Watching: Sennot is uproarious as a character who chomps Xanax like they’re Flintstone vitamins and isn’t even remotely convincing in her insistence that having a podcast is a lot of hard work.
Memorable Dialogue: A prime example of how these people talk:
“Are there any guns in the house?”
“No. David’s acting like a dick, but his politics check out.”
Sex and Skin: Only face-mashing.
Our Take: It’s not a spoiler to say that more than one character becomes a corpse here – I mean, it’s right there in the title of the movie. The situation escalates to a point where these people get so emotionally volatile, they don’t just accuse each other of murder, they say things like “Your parents are upper-middle class!” and “Don’t call her a psychopath, that’s so ableist!” I mean, people may be dead in pools of their own blood, but DON’T accuse anyone of these sensitive individuals of being ABLEIST. My god. Be reasonable!
So Bodies Bodies Bodies is a Zillennial scorcher of a comedy that hoovers up a little too much blow and crashes its Beemer into an old-school whodunit. Director Halina Reijn and screenwriter Sarah DeLappe bullseye the satire, eviscerating the way this generation’s Privilegenati think, speak and act, and concluding with one hell of a punchline. Sometimes, they hammer the point home a little hard – a third-act meltdown finds the remaining parties firing P.C. phraseology at each other like passive-aggressive paintballers – but you may be laughing too hard to care. The filmmakers also may be in it to torture these oft-loathsome characters, setting the stage on a good ol’ Dark And Stormy Night and screwing with them by not only pulling the plug on the electricity, but on the – gasp! – WiFi. They toy with points-of-view and shroud things in darkness and stage fierce struggles over possession of a gun. But the struggle over a dropped smartphone is far fiercer.
Our Call: STREAM IT. Bodies Bodies Bodies is lean and nasty and damn funny.
John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Read more of his work at johnserbaatlarge.com.