Gen Z girls go wild with murder in the dark and a killer ending.

Whilst I didn’t quite love this as much as I wanted to, there is a lot to commend it.  I definitely think it did new and unusual things, and in a cookie cutter, sequel-safe world I can totally respect that.  And I did have fun.  I’ll probably watch it again at some point just to see if there are more layers, more to see.

It’s basically a typical slasher set up.  A bunch of wild and beautiful girls, loose with drugs and drink are locked down in their richest friend’s house for a hurricane/storm party.  They play “bodies bodies bodies.”  The power goes out.  Someone is actually, properly murdered.  Chaos and suspicion ensues.

The thing is every element in this film is probably divisive.  You’ll either love it or hate it.  It’s fairly committed to what it’s doing.

There’s a lot of sexy, saucy intrigue between the characters, who loves who, who is sleeping with who.  There’s a bit a raunch to start, although no nudity.

There are a lot of characters full stop.  Actually, this absolutely isn’t true, there’s really only seven of them, and five of them are girls.  But because you’re madly trying to keep track of them all to figure out the murderer, and learn their names, and they’re in the dark most of the time it feels like there’s more.

It’s always dark!  Many films that do “night” and “dark” still bring a lot of light to the scenes.  This film keeps the characters and a lot of the action really poorly lit, and really gives you the full experience of creeping around a house by phone torch.  There’s plenty of lens flare and glowing faces in the dark.  Except of course for Alice, who decides wearing glow-necklaces will be very helpful for hiding from a killer… good work Alice.

The music cranks and drops at the drop of a hat.  It really feels like a party where someone drunk is in charge of the music.  And I actually really liked this aspect.

There is a lot of the girls yelling at each other.  It’s a beautiful trainwreck of escalating drama in this respect.  It’s laughable, but it does pitch as a comedy, so that’s okay.  There are a lot of lines that may or may not be hilarious.  I quite liked the script, but also felt maybe they could have taken some of the jokes further… but maybe I’m just not quite the right target generation.  I think it was satirical.

I loved watching these rich, bratty, drugged-up, drunk girls getting armed up with knives and swords and guns and basically anything else they can get their hands on.  Watching them find more bodies.  Trying to escape.  Again, it felt like fun and voyeuristic glimpse into rich girls getting dragged down.  One of my favourite conversations in the film centers on a character accusing another of a pretend rags-to-riches story, when she’s “upper middle-class.”

It doesn’t outstay it’s welcome.  It’s a tight and tidy 1hr 34 mins – the right length for something like this.  

And while some films seem to struggle with an ending, I will muse on the excellence of this one’s punchline for a while.

J* gives it 3 stars.  

PS. This is a tough call to give… there are definitely parts that felt 4 stars, and it is a high 3 stars.  It’s definitely the closest I’ve felt to needing to give a half star between the two for ages.  I think to get me to 4 stars, I’d need to have been more drawn in with a relatable character, and maybe had more textbook horror beats, more jump scares… but again, it’s what wasn’t cliche that made this interesting.  Aaaaah…. So hard to score.

PPS. “Check her texts!”