Review: Bodies Bodies Bodies (2022)

Bodies Bodies Bodies follows a group of friends throwing a hurricane party to pass the time during a, well, hurricane.  While playing a game called Bodies Bodies Bodies, they find David (Pete Davidson), whose house they are staying at, has had his throat slit.  What follows is these mostly-lifelong friends trying to figure out who among them is the killer.

When it was released, it was a fairly critically acclaimed movie, with several glowing reviews and a 86% on Rotten Tomatoes.  Several different horror blogs I frequent also recommended it, so while it took me awhile to get around to viewing it, I went into this film fairly optimistic.

I should not have been.

One of my biggest complaints about horror films in the early aughts was the tendency to make 90% of the characters insufferable assholes so that the audience would not care when they met their inevitable end.  Thankfully, that is no longer the case, but for awhile it poisoned a large number of otherwise fine horror films, making them a chore to watch.

Watching this was a chore.

All of these characters suck.  And while that could honestly work for this film - it leans hard into the black comedy aspect of its horror-comedy, to limited success - there has to be someone worthwhile for us to follow along with.  That person doesn't have to be a good person, but we need to at least be invested in their story, but of our two main characters, neither of them has an arc that is interesting - one is far to opaque a character and the other sucks just as hard as all the other people in that house.

The worst part is I can see what screenwriters Kristen Roupenian (who has a Story By credit) and Sarah DeLappe (with a Screenplay By credit) were going for.  Maybe it didn't translate well from page to screen?  Maybe director Halina Reijn removed some of the more biting satire?  Either way, the movie ends up subjecting the viewer to 90 minutes of 'friends' being assholes to one another with the occasional death.

There is one scene that shows what the entire movie could have been - fairly late, so I won't say who the remaining four characters are to avoid spoilers - and it makes me wish that energy had permeated the entire film instead of the one brief moment.

How are the performances?  Good, I guess?  That's not fair, there is one particularly spectacular performance from Rachel Sennott that is a breath of fresh air and probably the only performance that (to me) captured what the movie needed to work properly.

Now, I will say to take my opinion with a grain of salt:  As mentioned at the top of the review, this film received mostly positive reviews and several people I respect highly recommend it, so this could be a case of a movie just not working for me individually.  So while my rating will be fairly low, and I definitely would not recommend it, don't let just my opinion sway you.

4 out of 10