In the murderously fun Bodies Bodies Bodies, Gen Z privilege is the first victim
Amandla Stenberg leads a killer cast through a night of bloodshed, parlor games, and social satire
Film Reviews TikTok
In Dutch director Halina Reijn’s freewheeling and incisive horror comedy Bodies Bodies Bodies, Gen Z characters get their throat slit, fall from the top of a staircase and get shot. Yet for these twentysomething party people who’ve gathered at an isolated New York mansion to ride out an oncoming hurricane, there’s nothing deadlier than a well-delivered insult. And there are plenty to go around in this razor-sharp skewering of group dynamics in the digital age. Taking place over one rain-soaked night, Bodies Bodies Bodies is a tense and increasingly violent takedown of friendships built on a flimsy foundation of TikTok dances and group chats. Featuring a rock-star collection of young actresses, led by Amandla Stenberg (The Hate U Give), the film uses horror tropes to coax the insecurities and buried resentments out of friends whose insecurities and buried resentments are all they have in common.
Reijn starts off by deftly introducing each character and whatever annoying personality trait will become most crucial as the evening begins to break down. Sophie (Stenberg) is the last member of her clique to pull up to the dark and woodsy mansion where she and her girlfriends will drink, do rails and hook up while a powerful hurricane drenches the area. Upon arrival, Sophie is ripped for not participating in their group chat. The fact she’s been in rehab barely counts as an excuse. Sophie is accompanied by a newcomer, her freshly minted, middle-class girlfriend Bee (Maria Bakalova from Borat Subsequent Moviefilm), who’s so shy and uninitiated in the ways of these vipers that she brings zucchini bread as a thank you gift.
The mansion is owned by the family of the supremely punchable David (played by the supremely punchable Pete Davidson, wearing a pink tracksuit he probably brought from home), whose belligerent attitude sets the tone for the evening. He reduces his girlfriend, Emma (Chase Sui Wonders), to tears by accusing her of not having an original thought in her head. Then he gets aggro with Greg (Lee Pace), the much older, Tinder boyfriend of Alice (Rachel Sennott from Shiva Baby). She’s an airheaded podcaster whose podcast sounds awful, a view supported by Sophie’s ex-girlfriend, Jordan (Myha’la Herrold), who can only manage to hate-listen to it. None of these supposed friends seem to like each other very much but they stay connected because the social pecking order demands it, as does, according to Alice, “the suffocating weight of our shared history.”
Working with cinematographer Jasper Wolf, Reijn creates a darkly oppressive, pressure-cooker atmosphere that’s ripe for exploding when the proper conditions arise. What gets it going is when the group plays a game of Bodies Bodies Bodies, which involves turning off the lights until the designated killer “murders” someone by tapping them on the back and then the survivors guess whodunnit. When one of the partygoers actually ends up dead and the hurricane knocks out power and cell service, everyone panics, blame is passed around, and the virtue signaling, wokeness, and performative allyship that Gen Zers use to define themselves become weapons of suspicion and derision.
As the body count increases and the women grow more distrusting of each other, the foundation of buzzwords upon which they’ve constructed their identity starts feeling increasingly fragile. Without sounding forced and without condescension, screenwriter Sarah DeLappe finds room for all the empty phrases that puff up the socially conscious bona fides of young, upper-class snobs. Emma sounds petty and petulant throwing around words like “gaslighting” and “toxic,” while Sophie calls out being triggered. The neurotic Alice claims she has body dysmorphia, as if being any type of victim is a mic-drop excuse for all bad behavior.
Reijn, though, isn’t shaming her characters for any of this, nor is she attempting a boomer-approved takedown. The film is more observational than scathingly critical, and there are moments when we’re not sure if that’s a problem—or the point. All this mayhem never really adds up to much, as if calling out Gen Z for the folly of their well-intentioned faults was enough. And yet, it is enough, thanks to the film’s very game and hard-working cast. The charismatic Sennett leads the pack, proving herself a terrific physical comedienne, while Bakalova, as the foreigner who draws much suspicion from the others, maintains her exterior cool so well that she’s in pole position to be the killer.
Reijn, whose last directing effort was Instinct, the Netherland’s 2019 Best International Feature Film Oscar submission, directs with a loose, improvisational energy. If she keeps too loose a grip on the reins, occasionally letting scenes meander, there’s another surprise or biting line of dialogue to get things back on track. While there’s plenty of blood and nasty kills, Reijn is not here to provide a true horror film experience. The search for the murderer, which culminates in a hilarious twist ending, is just a pretext to turn the screws on a bunch of hypocritical, virtue-signaling culture warriors until the shallowness of their convictions is revealed.
With its biting, class-aware humor and escalating body count, Bodies Bodies Bodies is the intersection of a rather sprawling Venn diagram that would include films like Mean Girls, Heathers, And Then There Were None, Lord Of The Flies, The Exterminating Angel, and even The Rules Of The Game. All those films traffic in fear and insecurity within a group. Bodies Bodies Bodies, shrewdly and with abandon, adds social media-fueled performative wokeness to the mix and makes a damning case for their limits in the real world. If the film has any takeaway, it’s that a TikToker’s DEI-embracing identity is only as strong as their Wi-Fi signal.
54 Comments
This reviewer sounds like a bitter old person who hates the youth. It’s weird.
Rright? I thought maybe it was satirical at first but damn man, if “performative wokeness” and Pete Davidson really bug you so bad, maybe it’s time to change lanes, move out of the pop culture beat and start an obliquely bigoted paid newsletter on Substack, maybe?
very on the nose.
I’d rather this have been reviewed by a bitter young person who hates people older than them.
yes please
Fetishizing victimhood isn’t necessarily new but has definitely been taken to the next level in more recent years, and accusing people of deliberately trying to inflict psychological trauma (gaslighting etc.) has become so common it doesn’t even mean anything at this point. And yes it’s fair to say this is more prevalent among current youth. Don’t have to hate (another stupidly overused word) anyone to make this observation.
“deliberately trying to inflict psychological trauma (gaslighting etc.) has become so common”You’re nuts. Er, I mean, stop gaslighting me.
Yyyyyyyyyyup
If anything I thought he was too gentle. Gen Z is full of people just like the characters in this movie: self-obsessed bullies co-opting the language and buzzwords of social justice movements in order to wage merry war against whoever happens to piss them off. Yes, not all of them are like that, and yes, other generations have their own problems. But it’s there all the same, and people shouldn’t have to wear kid gloves because they don’t want to sound like a boomer.
Co-opt DEEZ NUTS!
Better nuk’em from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure.
Just like many boomers did back in the 60-70s with hippy, civil rights and gender equality language of its time.
This reviewer sounds like a gigachad who is based and poggers. No cap.
You’re absolutely right. There’s no need for accountability when your social media echo chamber says so.
But are they goated with the sauce?
Call me crazy, but I think he just might be. This review is definitely giving me ‘quirked up white boy with a little bit of swag’ vibes.
Young people are just as hateful as they’ve always been
Insecurity, jealously and pettiness all just have a different vocabulary at the moment.
It’s like the review was written expressly for me.
Yes, get an old-man-yelling-at-the-sky vibe too. I’m well past being a 20-something, but does Gen-Z really define itself by “virtue signaling, wokeness, and performative allyship”? Or is this just a group of particularly insufferable people that exist in every cohort?
What is “Gen Z privilege”, is that an existing term I’m supposed to already know?
They are privileged because they’re still young, so they have great skin and bodies, as opposed to us fat old haggard people.
Oh, well I have not-being-murdered privilege
I haven’t got hit by a bus!
Thank you. As an old, fat, haggard person, I now feel seen.
Not to mention they still have their hair. Hirsute privilege is one of the biggest challenges faced by a free and equal society, but people just aren’t ready to have that conversation.
Unless you’re being cast on Breaking Bad. That show had a very bald-inclusive workplace.
Being younger than the person who wrote this article
I think it means kids who never haven’t had phones
That’s a curse tho, not a privilege
I have not been a SNL viewer in many years, which is why, whenever I see Pete Davidson, he just looks to me like someone who would be credited as “Vampire Number Three” at the end of a cheap indie horror film that you stumble across on YouTube.
I once described him as “the fourth of five Entourage bros, only tolerated because he’s the best at mocking the fifth one.”
isn’t shaming her characters for any of this, nor is she attempting a boomer-approved takedown. The film is more observational than scathingly criticalI hope so! I actually like Gen-Z’s desire to explore and observe systems even if they don’t always nail the language or might be hypocritical in their actions. we’re all contradictions. finding some connection over silly things like a dance on tik-tok doesn’t have to be as harmful as older generations claim.
I was going to complain about this but you did it better.
From the people who *didn’t* bring you Everything Everywhere All at Once, it’s this year’s next sleeper hit, Nothing Nowhere Never Happening!
Fucking seriously. Either review movies a day before or the day that they’re released as a rule or mention the release date somewhere.
Anyway, it comes out next Thursday. I went to buy tickets for tomorrow and was disappointed.
Pretty sure it opens in New York and LA tomorrow, so technically this review *is* dropping the day before release.
The year is 2022 and it got an “AV Club B”. I’m good, it’s all I need to know. WTF’s your problem?
A24 = Actresses are all 24 years old
While they’re all pretty close to dividing line, it seems to me that the large majority of the cast are actually just very young Millenials rather than Gen Z. The definitions are obviously not set in stone, but I was under the impression that Gen Z are those born 1997-2012. Almost every person named in the review was born in 1996.I’m fairly sure that Lee Pace is technically Gen X, as well.
I gotta stop coming to this website man
Bet, fam.
Kids these days, amiright fellow Millenials? Oof, my back!
As a GenXer I’m loving the fact that the damn Millennials now have a younger generation that is younger and hipper than they are. But Millennials will still probably dominate pop culture in the foreseeable future because they are the second biggest American generation ever (next to the Boomers, who are beginning to die off), whereas GenX and GenZ are rather small cohorts.
Not to worry Frank, I am in your cohort. #Solidarity
It feels like Z and Millennial culture are a lot closely interlinked than between other generations. One example are memes, such as the quirked up white boy one, have usually quickly become popular amongst Millennial’s even if they originate from Gen. Z. I think its probably because the tendency for Millennial’s to adopt whatever social media that Gen. Z populates, shortens the cultural distance.
This GenXer agrees with you. Our memory is long and we have an earned perspective on pretty much everything. I often read the comments here with an amused bemusement over all the fuss made about *everything.*
So is this like Black Christmas 2020 only good? I’m ambivalent about this film mainly because I’m over older people using young college people as annoying little yappy dogs. As long as it’s A Little More Safe Spaces, A Little Less Black Christmas 2020 I’ll be aight.
What is Gen-Z Privilege and how can I get some?
For someone who’s so keen on lampooning Zoomers for their use of empty buzzwords, this article sure contains a lot of them—“wokeness,” “performative allyship,” “virtue signalling,” etc… Look, I get it. I, too, am aware the harsh limitations of political and social theory propagated via TikTok discourse and Tumblr posts. I, too, sometimes want to shake people and get them to read an actual book about a subject before posting their hot takes online. But the way you’re talking about it, that bitter little edge of derision that creeps into every bit of this interview? It seems less like you’re frustrated with today’s youth for being inexperienced and theoretically-imprecise when discussing important social issues, and more that you’re seething at the fact that they have the temerity to be talking about it at all. It’s not a good look. It is, in fact, cringe as fuck.
I read this and my takeaway is Gen Z’ers getting mowed down like wheat and I can’t get any further. It’s like contently scratching a pesky itch.
too loose a grip on the reignsOh ffs.
The fact that NONE, NONE of the comments are about the film and are about making fun of the writing for some inane reason with the self righteousness of doing it because they deserve it is what is driving this site to hell, and not the listicles. You are the worst, people.And this film has a lot of discourse which should have been… discussed. Though what I like the most is the loopy way it is written, something addressed in the review: it is very clear at setting up plot points through the character traits and then bringing them back with rage. I am not totally behind it, but it is a fun “oh, that escalated quickly” story.