Mark Reviews Movies: BODIES BODIES BODIES

Bodies Bodies Bodies, A24

Follow on Facebook | Follow on Twitter | Become a Patron

Review by Mark Dujsik | August 4, 2022

Gene Siskel used to posit that—to paraphrase—a movie should be at least as interesting as a documentary of the actors in it having lunch. Bodies Bodies Bodies makes one wonder if a documentary of its actors playing the eponymous game might be more entertaining. That project would have had a lot less pretense, to be sure.

The idea here is both patently routine, in that it's essentially a murder mystery, and kind of clever, in the way it somewhat uses that formula to pick at the lives and mindsets of young people who have only known a world with the internet and all that it entails. Broadly speaking, all of these characters are some degree of narcissistic, suspicious, gossipy and back-biting, and more or less lost when they can't text, call, or look up something online.

As unfair and stereotypical as those descriptions may be, we have to speak of these characters in broad terms. After all, those are the only terms that Sarah DeLappe's screenplay provides.

DeLappe and director Halina Reijn's setup is the purest stuff of murder mysteries and detective fiction since the genre's inception. In it, a group of people gather in a remote mansion, far from any other sign of civilization or any form of external help. That group is made up of long-time friends, as well as a pair of outsiders who are romantically connected—but not for too long or too seriously, because that's another stereotype that needs to be fulfilled—to people within the clique. Someone is killed, and the rest of the story has the survivors trying to figure out which among them or hidden figure is a murderer.

Our main characters are Sophie (Amandla Stenberg), who's part of the friend group, and her girlfriend Bee (Maria Bakalova), who has been dating her for six weeks and is worried that her background will disappoint Sophie's well-to-do friends. The opening has the two cavorting and canoodling in romantic bliss, and when Sophie tells Bee that she loves her, Bee doesn't respond in kind. That's not a source of conflict or anything, but it does give us a sense of Sophie's passion and Bee's quiet, cautious manner.

None of that eventually matters, anyway. The couple's arrival at the house, palatial and surrounded by forest, brings with it plenty of other conflicts. Nobody seems to be expecting or much wanting Sophie to be there, where the friends have gathered to party and wait out an approaching hurricane (giving us another semi-staple of the traditional genre—just to make everyone more isolated and helpless). We learn that Sophie had issues with drug addiction, went into rehab, and, upon her exit, stopped communicating with the group.

Some of them—namely Sophie's oldest friend David (Pete Davidson), whose family own the estate, and Alice (Rachel Sennott), who apparently doesn't do much of anything besides partying and recording a podcast—are happy to see Sophie. Others—namely Jordan (Myha'la Herrold), whose exclusive characteristic is grumpiness, and David's actor girlfriend Emma (Chase Sui Wonder), who has been having doubts about her relationship—aren't. Then, there's Greg (Lee Pace), who is older, has been dating Alice for a couple weeks, and knows of Sophie—certainly from whatever gossip has been going around before her arrival—before she even learns his name.

Anyway, the hurricane hits, and the friends play the game of the title, which involves a "murderer" picking off players one by one in the dark until the others correctly identify the killer. Soon enough, the power goes out, and someone dies a very real, very grisly, and very bloody death. Everyone starts suspecting everyone else there, as well as David's absent brother, who recently left in a violent fit.

The plot details—who suspects whom and why, who secretly or openly resents whom and for what reasons, who else ends up dead and under which mysterious or obvious circumstances they die—have to remain unstated here. That's because those details are primary concern of the story and how DeLappe defines these characters.

Reijn plays the resulting narrative as a mystery, of course, as clues and potential motives and misdirection reveal themselves. It's also presented as a straightforward horror story, with characters wandering around in the dark before someone or something startles them, and a dark comedy.

For a stretch, that humor is subdued, although the dismissive and nonchalant way in which most of these characters deal with one of their friends—and then more people—being killed by an apparent murderer in their midst certainly undercuts the tension and stakes of the narrative. By the third act, the comedy comes front and center, as the surviving characters bicker over trivial things with a severity that matches the deadly surface of the plot.

In a way that won't be disclosed, the comedy is the ultimate point. Bodies Bodies Bodies might have benefited from a more direct and open approach that embraces its final idea, but as a game of constant misdirection, maybe watching these actors playing the game would have been more interesting.

Back to Home

Buy Related Products