Title - Bodies Bodies Bodies (2022)
Director - Halina Reijn (Instinct)
Cast - Amandla Stenberg, Maria Bakalova, Rachel Sennott, Pete Davidson, Lee Pace
Plot - A simple party game played amongst a group of rich and socially aware friends turns deadly on a stormy night in a lavish abode.
"That's the vibe I like to put out there"
Review by Eddie on 02/12/2022
Distributed by famed horror production company A24, there was a lot of hype and early good will surrounding Halina Reijn's hip and meta horror infused social commentary feature Bodies Bodies Bodies but despite some solid critical plaudits, Bodies has come and gone in the space of a few months with little too no surviving fanfare and despite a few nice moments of comedy and horror blending as one, Reijn's film is a hard film to fall in love with as we spend 90 brief minutes with a bunch of unlikable characters in an increasingly unengaging narrative.
Starting out in a promising fashion as we join Amandla Stenberg's Sophie and Borat 2 breakout star Maria Bakalova's Bee at a small-scale party at Pete Davidson's David's lavish abode in the midst of a storm cell moving across the area, Bodies appears to be the equivalent of a modern day Agatha Christie tale of sorts with filters, tags and mentions too spice things up but the central premise holding everything together as a simple party game turns deadly loses a lot of steam well before the half way mark of the film, leaving any hope the film had of being as cool as it thinks it is solely in the hands of its performers and their characters.
Like we needed any more proof that its harder than ever to fall head over heels for this type of generation on camera, a generation that seems to create all their own problems without anyone else being involved and then expecting said problems to be fixed by anyone else other than themselves, Bodies tries to make us care for who lives and dies in this wild and over the top tale but despite solid attempts by Stenberg and Bakalova to spice things up, the only person that really walks away from this film as a winner is the always underrated Lee Pace who steals many of the films best moments as the illusive and mysterious Greg, who is far too old to be hanging around with this gang but is unquestionably the MVP of Reijn's ensemble.
The other glaring issue for Bodies outside of its collection of unlikable characters and deteriorating narrative richness is the fact its genre combination of horror, comedy and thriller never pays off the way in which one would have hoped for with the film neither scary enough, funny enough or thrilling enough to be considered a successful melting pot of ideas that some seem to think is saying and doing something fresh but upon a deeper delving is nothing more than a familiar set-up and commentary piece that tackles similar themes and subjects that have been bought to life in far more memorable and exciting ways in the past and surely the future also.
Final Say -
A rare miss for the usually great A24 wheelhouse, Bodies Bodies Bodies tries its hardest to be the new cool kid in town but fails to make an impression that's worthy of mentions, tags or a viewing.
2 swords out of 5
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