Bodies Bodies Bodies (2022)
A murder mystery among people already losing the argument.
Directed by Halina Reijn · 94 minutes
Source-based draft ready for editorial review. Critical readings, verdict and advisories are proposed.
The storm cuts the power, a party game becomes dangerous, and everyone has a vocabulary for explaining why someone else is the problem. Bodies Bodies Bodies builds its mystery among people who can diagnose a relationship more quickly than they can establish what happened in a room.
That is a good comic starting point. The film still has to make the difference between a deliberately unbearable group and an unbearable evening worth attending.
Before you watch
Contains bloody violence, drug use and hostile arguments involving manipulative behaviour and discriminatory language. The BBFC records cocaine, cannabis and prescription-drug misuse as well as the violence. The comedy does not make the injuries imaginary or harmless.
The setup
Bee (Maria Bakalova) accompanies her girlfriend Sophie (Amandla Stenberg) to a hurricane party with a wealthy circle of friends. A murder-themed game gives way to a real emergency. The gathering's existing resentments become an increasingly unreliable method of investigation. The Lionsgate synopsis establishes the party setup; the screenplay is by Sarah DeLappe, from a story by Kristen Roupenian.
Nobody listens well in the dark
The useful dramatic device is the outsider. Bee arrives without the group's shared history, which lets the audience encounter its private hierarchies through someone who cannot automatically decode them. At the same time, not belonging makes her easy to scrutinise. The film can make access and exclusion into immediate thriller mechanics.
Its social language is another mechanism. Terms meant to describe harm can become weapons for winning an argument, particularly when the speakers have incentives to excuse themselves. A review should distinguish the film's particular targets from a broad complaint about young people talking strangely. The satire depends on what these characters do with their vocabulary.
Reijn's staging also has a practical challenge: a dark house, a mobile group and rapidly changing suspicions. Phone lights and the group’s changing positions make certainty feel temporary. The house becomes a place in which seeing part of an encounter is enough to start another argument, rather than enough to settle one.
The caveat is the company. If the performances and timing do not make the group's self-absorption funny, the murder mystery has a lot of conversational friction to carry. That is a legitimate audience limitation, not a reason to demand that the characters become nicer.
Corny DNA
The interest is in corrosive comedy and social panic. Outrageous reactions may be deliberate, and the film's absurdity should be evaluated alongside the precision of its joke. A numerical camp score would add little until that distinction is settled.
Verdict
Watch with caveats — proposed. Potentially a sharp choice for viewers who enjoy abrasive ensemble comedy inside a horror setup. Its abrasive company is the main reservation. The eventual explanation gives the arguments a sharper purpose, but the viewer still has to enjoy spending time inside them.
Spoilers from here
Reveal the plot details and ending
The group supplies the killer
David accidentally cuts his own throat while filming an attempt to open a champagne bottle with a blade. The recording is found after the group has turned suspicion into further deaths. The plot account corroborates the accident and the final discovery.
It matters that the explanation is so small. The characters build an elaborate theory of hostility around a piece of vanity and clumsiness. Their damaged relationships provide enough apparent evidence to keep the theory going, and their fear then produces real violence. The film has not introduced a master manipulator to explain away their choices.
Being right about the wrong things
The arguments are full of claims that may describe a genuine grievance while failing to establish anything about the immediate danger. That gap gives the satire its point. Knowing the correct language for a behaviour does not make a person a reliable witness, especially when the accusation offers a way to regain status.
The surviving pair's discovery does not turn them into a secure couple. Distrust over Sophie's phone has helped lead them to the other recording, and their wider difficulties remain. The final return of reception is a suitably small answer to a catastrophe in which connection was abundant and understanding scarce.