In A24’s horror movie, Sophie (Amandla Stenberg) tells her new girlfriend Bea (Maria Bakalova), “They aren’t as nihilistic as they look on the internet.” body body body, as they move to join Sophie’s friends at a gathering. Sophie and Bea, who have been dating for six weeks, head to a house party at the mansion of Sophie’s best friend David (Pete Davidson). They plan to survive an approaching hurricane, but Sophie’s enigmatic whims are just as catastrophic. unknown partner. Given the speed with which getaways devolve into bloody mayhem, it’s a bad time to be the new girl in the crowd.
body body body Especially not internet-driven movies. The hurricane quickly kills power at David’s house, and cell service and his Wi-Fi go down as well. The most controversial arguments focus on semi-private disrespect, not on public tweets. But Sophie’s first attempt to soothe her friends’ irritation remains with the audience as the night goes spectacularly wrong. It’s true that these people don’t seem particularly nihilistic. At the same time, they surprisingly want each other to suspect murder.
body body body It Starts As A Social Anxiety Drama, But It’s Not Like It shiva baby, also here, steals a scene as Sophie’s friend Alice in a symphony of discomfort starring Rachel Sennot. Jordan (Maihara Herold) gives almost everyone a sideways glance. And Greg (Lee Pace) is the older man Alice has been with in an even shorter window than Sophie and Bea have been together. Aside from Greg, the characters occupy a vaguely adult age group. Given their reckless substance abuse and carelessness towards each other, they are still either too young or too old.
Seeing them snipe each other is amazing in comparison to how most horror movie friend groups are canned and overly scrubbed. body body body It eventually manifests as fear. It opens with a parlor game, the flashiest gimmick of any mediocre Blumhouse title, but director Harina Rain and screenwriter Sarah Derup ( “cat person” The author Kristen Roupenian has shown little interest in sticking to this framework. The power goes off on cue and the friends are horrified, not knowing the real killer, when someone really does die. (There’s a bit of meta-suspense that the semi-celebrity performer becomes the surprise’s first victim.)
From there, body body body Start playing as compressed scream, sped up as if the filmmakers believed they were playing for a generation that can’t keep both eyes on a full-length feature film. Make a compelling choice to accelerate. Rather than satire giving way to the tension of a horror movie, the accusations and defensiveness grow louder and more ridiculous as the characters feel more in danger. At some point, the deadly danger is interrupted by an equally shocking betrayal that one friend may be listening to another podcast with disgust.
However, with neither mode ultimately having much to say, it seems like the film could switch between satirical edge and knife edge at will. body It doesn’t look like it has some overarching tropes up its sleeve. In one scene, the characters go through a dizzying series of fads in fear and anger, as if to vehemently denounce David’s initial complaint that the word “gaslighting” has lost all meaning. Spout words into each other.
All the actors are solid, but Cenot is particularly interesting as Alice. Ultimately, the film is more of a naughty thought experiment than an attack on Zoomer. It’s essentially asking, “What if people who were so aware of their triggers and traumas had to react to the terrifying events of a horror movie?”
But as the film progresses, the horror aspect just doesn’t hold up. Reijn’s glow stick and flashlight lighting aesthetics are neat at first, but the sheer amount of shaky cameras, close-ups, and intense lighting streaks add to the unsettling realism offered by that subgenre. Without, it finally brings to mind found footage horror. better entry. again, body body bodyis surprisingly neutral about how young people use, abuse, and manipulate their bodies, and how this affects their physical reactions to danger.
The understandable but familiar instinct of creators is to play instead Tips with a character. That means Bea, one of her potentially most interesting characters, will have to remain relatively obscure in order to maintain the mystery of a film that quickly begins to run out of suspects. Despite the close camera distance, this is an arm-stretched horror film. Reijn and DeLappe don’t seem too interested in preying on true horror, laughingly confirming suspicions that your friends are secretly badmouthing you. body body body It’s fun to work through these well-founded anxieties, but some viewers may still be waiting for a punch or better punchline as the end credits roll.
body body body It will be released in limited theaters on August 5th, and will be released nationwide on August 12th.