One of the most entertaining things about Nahnatchka Khan’s cheerfully blood-soaked comedy horror “Totally Killer” is the way it embraces the inherent implausibility and even ridiculousness of time-travel movies and slasher films, leaning into both genres with self-referential gusto to the point where we half-expect one of the characters to break the fourth wall and address us directly, reminding us not to take any of this least bit seriously.
This is “Back to the Future” meets “Scream,” with a sprinkling of “Hot Tub Time Machine,” “Big,” “Happy Death Day,” “Freaky” and “The Final Girls.” Director Khan (of “Fresh Off the Boat” and the fantastically entertaining 2019 rom-com “Always Be My Maybe”) and screenwriters David Matalon, Sasha Perl-Raver and Jen D’Angelo clearly have a love for the tropes of time-travel films as well as modern slasher movies, playing the material for about 70% laughs and 30% horror. It’s a mix that doesn’t always work, and at times the 1980s period-piece jokes are almost too easy, but the dialogue is snappy, the horror scenes are effectively staged, and the cast is terrific.
Kiernan Shipka (“Mad Men,” “Chilling Adventures of Sabrina”) sparkles as Jamie Hughes, a typical 17-year-old who just wishes her helicopter mother, Pam (Julie Bowen, we love Julie Bowen), and her goofy, sitcom-type dad, Blake (a very funny Lochlyn Munro), would give her some breathing room and let her enjoy a Halloween night concert with her friends. (Jamie’s mom’s Halloween costume is Molly Ringwald in “The Breakfast Club” and hey, the family name is Hughes as in John Hughes, and much of this film will take place in and around a high school in the 1980s, ta da!)
Actually, though, Pam’s overprotectiveness during Halloween season is understandable, given she was the only one of her group of four friends not to be murdered by the so-called “Sweet Sixteen Killer” back in Halloween 1987 — and the killer, who wore a Max Headroom type of mask, has never been caught. When the SSK resurfaces in present day, a chase sequence takes us to an amusement park, where Jamie accidentally activates a time machine thingee (it’s best to just go with it) and lands squarely back in 1987, just before the trio of murders is about to take place.
Cue “Venus” by Bananarama on the soundtrack and the obligatory Big Hair and Members Only jacket sightings, not to mention a mom who wears a gaudy workout getup and laments that she’s yet to try coke. We’re in the 1980s, baby, just days before the Sweet Sixteen Killer will murder those three girls. Ooh, Jamie can alter the course of events, save lives and catch the Sweet Sixteen Killer before he can even act! What could possibly go right?
Along the way, of course, we’re going to get a slew of period-piece jokes and mild social commentary about the 1980s, from a man wearing a sexist T-shirt to a vicious gym-class game of dodgeball to a racist school team nickname to a parent who fills her car with cigarette smoke while giving a student a ride to the cops laughing when Jamie hands them a blood sample from the Sweet Sixteen Killer. What are they supposed do with this, plug it into some sort of magical computer device that will help them identify the murderer? What’s with this weirdo kid who claims to be a transfer student from Canada, anyway?
The “Back to the Future” vibes kick in when Jamie enrolls at Vernon High School (they just hand her a schedule, no verification process because, hey, the 1980s) and comes face to face with the teenage version of her mother Pam (now played by Olivia Holt). Jamie secretly works with the teenage edition of her best friend’s mother, Lauren (Troy Leigh-Anne Johnson), a super-smart science kid who believes Jamie’s time-travel story and tries to help her stop the Sweet Sixteen Killer, but she might be making things even worse.
Meanwhile, Jamie is also desperate to keep her future mom away from her future dad (Charles Gillespie), because they’re not supposed to get together until years later, and if they hook up now as high school students they’ll probably break up, and where will that leave Jamie? She might be erased from the future timeline, or she’ll be stuck in the 1980s with her parents who won’t become her parents … yeesh.
Director Khan employs a crisp and straightforward style that gives “Totally Killer” the look of a not particularly expensive horror film made in the 1980s, and I mean that in a good way. The reveal of the Sweet Sixteen Killer’s identity truly comes as a surprise, and the time-travel complications are resolved in a neat package that actually kinda works, at least as far as these things go. In fact, one could argue that Jamie’s time-travel adventure is easier to digest than Marty McFly’s initial journey through the decades. She’s not in a better time-travel movie, not even close, but she’s in one that weirdly makes a little more sense.
