Bodies Bodies Bodies

When some much of yourself is packaged up and given away on the internet, how much is left for those in front of you? Let’s throw in another element: what if there was no internet at all?

Bodies Bodies Bodies presents the collective consensus of Gen Z characters, takes away their primary communicators, and stands by as a storm screams up to crescendo.

What Is Bodies Bodies Bodies About?

How to guarantee conflict: lock ‘em up and ignite the fuse. The youth in question are gathered at the family mansion of David (Pete Davidson, Meet Cute) for a ‘hurricane party’.

David and friends have enough simmering unspoken resentments as it is, but the addition of flighty Sophie (Amandla Stenberg) and her new girlfriend, Bee (Maria Bakalova) combined with both phone signal and power knocked out by the storm, the mix becomes even more toxic.

Toxicity, trauma, gaslighting. This is a script that takes the online speak of the permanently connected generation and turns it back on themselves.

Denied practical complaints (it’s hard to moan when surrounded by wealth and affluence), the grievances turn personal. Throw in a parlour game of Bodies Bodies Bodies, which quickly shifts from fun to frantic, and the stage is set for the ultimate deplatforming.

Except it doesn’t. Key to the concept of ‘f— around and find out' is that first expletive. You can hardly complain that the cast are one-dimensional parody fodder because that’s the point.

Yet – and I know how strange this sentence is going to sound – none of them are quite hateful enough.

Bodies Bodies Bodies Official Trailer

Is Bodies Bodies Bodies Worth Watching?

As a working class fish out of water, Bee is the ostensible lead. Her distance from the wealthy friend group is clearly designed to bring dramatic and comedic contrast, but that leaves Bakalova herself with a rather thin ‘straight’ role that she struggles to stamp an identity on to.

Stand out star is clearly Rachel Sennott as Alice. She embodies the earnest but clueless coalescence of every one of the character traits that the movie is poking fun at.

Sennott grabs every opportunity to be totally unaware of her own useless fluff, combining a genuine kindness with self-absorbed ignorance.

Whether she is defending her podcast (wait until you find out what it’s about…); talking about being an ‘ally’ when confronted with hypocrisy; or stating an obvious fact with a pained, “did you just…?!”, Alice is a constant joy.

As for the others, Davidson turns up his smackable ratio decently high with a spoiled provocateur attitude but lacks an individualism to stand out from any other garden variety walking huff.

Sophie, Jordan (Myha’la Herrold) and Emma (Chase Sui Wonders) are almost a revolving argument, and none particularly spiral away enough to be distinctive.

We are constantly told that Emma’s profession as an actor makes her unreliable, but without directorial glimmers to cast doubt for the audience, we have to simply cling to the characters’ verbal aspersions.

As a murder mystery movie, there is a distinct lack of interest in the mystery. Characters lurch from reaction to reaction with little time for reflection.

Regardless of a flickering attention span, Bodies Bodies Bodies is a visual treat. The combination of mansion and hurricane gives licence to lashes of panache in the colour palettes and cinematography.

The camera stalks around its very well-to-do setting with all the swagger of its inhabitants, with lightning flashes casting brief illumination over what tries to remain hidden.

Similarly, the climax of the movie is an excellent distillation of everything that came before it, as revelations are laid bare.

If anything, there is so much gold squeezed into that one scene it feels like it leeched zingers from the rest of the movie, making for a lopsided experience.

Bodies Bodies Bodies is a slick and fun movie that fires a few too many arrows off of the bullseye it has painted for itself.

Despite all my criticisms, I’m now somewhat itching to watch it again because nothing is more fun in movies than spending time with people oblivious to how much they suck. Nobody is getting cancelled just yet.

Words by Mike Record