Much vaunted film company A24 continued their strong run in 2022 after Ti West’s X and Pearl with Bodies Bodies Bodies, a horror comedy masquerading as a slasher but with more than a few tricks up its sleeve. Centered around a group of young partygoers who gather in a rich friend’s mansion to wait out a hurricane, the group decides to play the titular mock murder game but when people start dying for real, tensions escalate into conflict and trust goes out the window.
Smart, satirical and funny, Dutch filmmaker Halina Reijn crafts a timely horror film, that skewers the online generation and shows how ill-equipped these kids are at dealing when the shit hits the fan.
Here are the ten best moments from the film, so tread carefully if you haven’t seen it as MAJOR SPOILERS LIE AHEAD!
1. Bee and Sophie
Bee (Maria Bakalova) and her girlfriend Sophie (Amandla Stenberg) are en route to the “hurricane party”. We first meet them in mid make-out whilst en route. We get a good sense of their relationship as being full of passion and affection for each other. Sophie tells Bee she loves her which seems to take her off guard. Later on we find out they have only been together for six weeks.
2. Meet the Guests
Bee and Sophie arrive at the mansion to find the other guests partying in the pool. Host David (Pete Davidson) seems antsy and put out by the inclusion of Bee who is a stranger to the rest of the gang. Bee meets David’s girlfriend Emma (Chase Sui Wonders), podcaster Alice (Rachel Sennott) , her new boyfriend Greg (Lee Pace) , and the stand-offish Jordan (Myha’la Herrold) who appears to have a history with Sophie. Despite the party vibe there is a palpable tension between David & pretty much everyone. Jordan also appears stand-offish to Bee. The fact that the group are all American rich kids and Bee has a working class Eastern European background makes Bee more uncomfortable.
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3. Let the games begin
Once the drinking, drugging and dancing winds down, the group decides to play “Bodies Bodies Bodies”, a murder mystery game. The game abruptly ends when David antagonises Greg, who retires for the night. David then has a fight with Emma and storms off.
4. Shit gets real
The hurricane has kicked in properly by now and before long the power goes out. Bee ventures outside to try and find a power box but instead finds a very dead David. His throat has been slit and the murder weapon, a large blade called a kukri that Greg used earlier to open a bottle of champagne, lies nearby. When the group try to go for help in Sophie’s car they find its battery is dead.
5. Confronting Greg
Like Bee, Greg is a ‘hanger-on’ and given that he was also apparently a military vet means that suspicion for David’s death immediately falls upon him. They search his room and find a go-bag and a map of the house and surrounding area. The group confront him in the gymnasium and things quickly spiral into violence which ends when Bee kills Greg with a kettle-bell. Alice reveals that he was actually a veterinarian, not an military veteran.
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6. Another body
Alice finds Emma dead from a head wound at the bottom of the stairs. The group realises (or thinks) they are being picked off one by one.
7. Bee suspected
Jordan and Alice question Bee’s background as she is the other new person in the group. Jordan previously googled Bee and found out she hadn’t graduated the college she initially said she had. Even Sophie is unsure and they cast Bee out of the house into the hurricane, locking her out of the mansion.
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8. Another suspect
Bee seeks refuge in the car but she finds underwear that matches Jordan’s bra in the backseat, alerting her to the possibility that Jordan and Sophie may have had a recent tryst. She crawls back into the mansion through a pet door to confront Jordan. They again accuse her of being the killer. Bee explains her absence from the college graduates roll due to her having to drop out to take care of her ill mother.
9. Revelations
The truth about the groups strained friendships are revealed. Jordan accuses Sophie of using David to help her get back access to her trust fund. She also confirms Bees suspicion that her and Sophie had recently hooked up. Sophie admits she has been avoiding her friends because they make sobriety difficult for her. She tells Alice that Jordan admitted to ‘hate-listening’ to her podcast.
Jordan shoots Alice in the leg. When they struggle for control of the gun, Alice is shot in the throat and dies. Bee pushes Jordan over the second floor staircase banister. She plunges to the ground below, mortally wounding herself. Jordan tells Bee to check Sophie’s text messages before she dies.
10. What really happened
The storm has blown over by morning. Fighting over Sophie’s phone, Bee picks up David’s phone instead and discovers that David accidentally killed himself trying to film himself opening a bottle of champagne with the kukri. Bee and Sophie realise there was no real murderer after all and the group killed themselves, amid all the tension, fear and paranoia.
What did you think of Bodies Bodies Bodies?
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