There’s plenty of nasty late summer fun to be had in A24’s of-the-moment slasher Bodies Bodies Bodies, a mix of gore and guffaws that aims to deliver the same poppy jolt that Scream did back in 1996 at a time when the genre is receiving a surprise resurrection. But while recent hits such as Halloween Kills and Scream 5 have mostly coasted on nostalgia, replaying the same old hits, stabbings and beheadings, Dutch director Halina Reijn’s English-language debut asks the difficult question of whether there’s anything truly new to do with the stalk-and-slash format most of us know so, or perhaps too, well. After a mostly effective 95 minutes, the answer would probably be a maybe?
Based on an original spec script from Cat Person author Kristen Roupenian and later given a dramatic rewrite by Pulitzer finalist and playwright Sarah DeLappe, Bodies Bodies Bodies is very much old dog with a flashy new trick up its sleeve. The setup is one that, pleasingly, leans big into familiar whodunnit-cum-slasher tropes – a group of friends, a remote old house, a menacing storm – but there’s a novel, if not entirely surprising, last-act twist that separates it from the crowd. I would say once all cards have been played it’s a film that’s easier to admire than to love, a trick to reluctantly applaud rather than cheer for.
