Bodies Bodies Bodies - 2022
Updated: Oct 27, 2022
I wanted to love this film, but, alas, I merely ended up liking it. See, the real trouble is, I think it’s the very construction of the picture which caused it to fall in my estimation. Let me explain. After some opening exercises built around drugs, partying, and awkward side glances denoting a shared history between these people that the viewer is not privy to, Bodies Bodies Bodies settles into its titular game. In short order, it makes its true intent abundantly clear, namely a total Gen Z takedown of the most acerbic kind.
This all sounds tame enough. But the issue in accomplishing this feat is Bodies has to walk a tightrope between being an unorthodox stroke of genius and, well, baldly annoying. And when I say irksome, I MEAN skull-drillingly abysmal human beings everywhere one looks. I can hardly find the pathos in me to root for a single one of these dumpster fires. They are godawful friends, self-absorbed soundbites, and really just vapid to the core.
Yet, I think this is PRECISELY the point. In order for the satirical bent to land most fully, these people must be as skeevy as the ideologies they espouse. Fortunately, director Halina Reijn was wise enough to rally a pretty game cast for the project. After The Hate U Give, I did not believe Amandla Stenberg had this kind of edgy, vicious dynamo in her. I was wrong. Maria Bakalova is fantastic as “the outsider” of the group who, as the film progresses, we can’t help but identify with as a fly on the wall to the proceedings. In her seeming innocence and naivete, she becomes like an avatar for the viewer, seeking to discern the clues around her and piece the puzzle together amongst these relationships in ruins.
I could mention a few others. Pete Davidson is sufficiently douche-y, as was to be expected, and Lee Pace is just a delight in his brief screen time. But let’s face it - Rachel Sennott once again steals the whole show out from under her castmates. Her screen presence is perfectly pitched here, just as in Shiva Baby. In her hands, Zillenial hot button phrases like “that’s so ableist” and “oh, mental health is so hard” land like sardonic bombs.
And this is really what the film is sending up. It’s certainly a takedown of the shallow nature of the rich. But it’s more than that, with racial and relational politics, identity, and the importance of “status” all in the crosshairs as well. Being “online” is entirely ubiquitous, as even the lighting for the film is often no more than glow bands and the flashlights on characters’ cell phones (a stroke of genius for the cinematographer). But the message through all the shouting and cursing, the backstabbing and broken trust, seems to be that the very terminology we’ve introduced into the world in the name of “tolerance” and “inclusivity” often does just the opposite - drive people apart to their own lonely poles.
The messaging is often funny and timely. But, Bodies ACTUAL genius does not come in its self-congratulation for writing lines of dialogue which hit every hot button term in the “woke online” vocabulary. No, it’s the way it subverts the whodunit genre entirely. The ending is really a banger when you consider what has transpired before it. It really clarifies the events that had unfolded and even, in its own way, drives home the satirical thrust of the whole project. It is that which moves Bodies to a slightly elevated level over the dozen slashers like it.
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