There are three things certain in life: death, taxes, and absolutely devastating friend group drama that changes you as a person. Bodies Bodies Bodies dares to ask: how toxic can a messy queer friend group get? The film taps into the early-to-mid-twenties queer zeitgeist, to varying degrees of accuracy, through a twist on a classic murder mystery. The film’s focus on a very specific type of queer friend group feels refreshing to a degree, although mileage may vary on how willing one may be to put up with the characters’ dialogue and behavior. However willing one may be to engage with selfish, vapid young adults, the production design and cinematography of Bodies Bodies Bodies offers a little something for all.
Much like the Agatha Christie novels that inspired Bodies Bodies Bodies, the film revolves around a group of largely well-off people stuck in a large mansion on a dark and stormy night. The modern spin on the murder-mystery party gone wrong is that our main cast is a group of largely jobless, rich mid-twenty-somethings in lieu of aristocracy or government figures. The group gathers together at David’s (Pete Davidson) parents’ home for an extravagant hurricane party. Bee (Maria Bakalova) enters into the world of social media socialites through her girlfriend (of three weeks…) and David’s childhood friend Sophie (Amandla Steinberg). As the hurricane rages outside, Bee and Sophie’s relationship with each other as well as their relationships with Sophie’s friends are placed under extreme duress as their titular game–a take on Werewolf or Mafia–begins producing real bodies.
What makes Bodies Bodies Bodies stick out among other slasher-adjacent murder mystery thrillers is its location–or, rather, the use of the location. Again, being stuck in a mansion during a dark and stormy night is a staple of murder-mysteries and serves as a nice homage to Agatha Christie novels like And Then There Were None or films like James Whale’s The Old Dark House. The setting gets a modern update with David’s old-money megamansion. Classic candle lighting gets replaced by other updated diegetic lighting like glow sticks and phone flashlights which add a ton of varied mood lighting to the giant house the characters run around. It truly feels like an, albeit much more well-financed, version of house parties I’ve been to. Using phone lighting also helps hammer home how much the characters rely on devices in order to exist even when the cell service cuts out when the storm picks up speed.
As alluded to earlier, tolerance for Bodies Bodies Bodies varies depending on personal tolerance for irony-poisoned Internet subcultures. While it’s apparent from the get that none of these characters, Bee mostly excluded, are meant to be likable, spending 97 minutes with them can be grating. The ensemble certainly plays well off one another. Alison (Rachel Sennott) and her boytoy Greg (Lee Pace) might be the most tolerable pairing; however Greg, a chill 40 year old, clearly serves as the straight man to the boiling chaos within the rest of the party. Jordan (Myha’la Herrold), Sophie’s ex-girlfriend, provides an interesting foil to both the group dynamics and, specifically, Bee and Sophie’s relationship. So, the acting nor the character dynamics aren’t really a problem: the dialogue is. While the cast revealed that there were plenty of opportunities for improv on set, Alison’s protracted podcasting joke being one, there’s a palpable gap between improv and scripted dialogue. Sometimes it clearly sounds like what a thirty-something screenwriter thinks what a terminally online queer adult sounds like, and the amount of improved dialogue makes this gap much more palpable.
While personal mileage may vary with tolerating the dialogue and characters of Bodies Bodies Bodies, it’s certainly an effective twist on a classic murder mystery. It may not be a perfect encapsulation of modern, terminally online twenty-somethings, but it’s a close approximation of phone-obsessed, rich, messy friend groups. It’s a fun way to spend a rainy afternoon if anything.
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Red Broadwell is a first-year film studies MA student at the University of North Carolina Wilmington. Their other work can be found at https://redbroadwell.journoportfolio.com
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