Review: BODIES BODIES BODIES

Bee and Sophie kiss slowly and happily. Cut to the pair in Sophie's car tapping manically at their phones. They drive out to a country mansion where some of Sophie's rich cronies are hosting a small party to weather a coming hurricane. The crew, caught in mid underwater meditation, are less than excited to see Sophie and meet Bee but things get kind of smoothed out. As evening comes with the storm someone suggests the detective game of the title which goes well until a slight spat breaks the fun into small pieces as old wounds are poked at. A little after that, the host staggers outside in the rain until he collapses from the great blade gash in his throat. The game got real.

This film is being sold as a black or horror comedy or a comic slasher and if that worries you then all you need to know is that while none of those descriptions quite lands it is a difficult one to encapsulate. That's a good thing. If I tried I'd call it a Tic Tok whodunnit. Instead of a self-appointed detective intoning, "you were the only one who had the key to the gun cabinet!" we get a group confrontation scene where the accusations fly and peeves hurl things off the rails while the killer's identity takes second place to the social media psychobabble that is fired in screams and taunts that ricochet around the room. The scene (which might even be in a library) is glorious and makes way for a busy third act that is variously funny and tense. 

My memory of the movie starts there and I recall the opening intimacy but then I also remember how plodding and repetitive the transition from the first to second acts is and wonder if I shouldn't highlight that as when it's happening it starts dragging the whole film out of the shape that had taken all that work to fashion. Then again, maybe I should just relax and remember how the wall to wall electronic score worked so well, that the performances were uniformly strong and how this story of identity and self (by which I don't mean narcissism) occurs between characters that are crafted to resemble each other so firmly that it takes that twist on the classic library scene with its firefight of bitchiness for us to start distinguishing one from the next. And what that adds up to for me is a film made with comedy that seldom makes us laugh in preference for amused recognition. This is a comedy of contemporary manners and aims to reveal how dark that notion is. It's all fine as long as the booze flows, the drugs work and the seamless hostility of the gleaming hip hop continues. Once the power goes out which is something that hurricanes are good at doing, the dark comes up through the floorboards in search of blood and there is always blood to be found. Maybe I should just throw my hands up and declare it: an A24 whodunnit. Yeah, I know, but it's still more accurate than horror comedy.