I counted five (5) bodies. That’s not enough. The bare minimum in a horror entitled “Bodies Bodies Bodies” is six (6), no? And seriously, that’s bare, bare, bare minimum. Five is Bodies Bodies Body. Clearly, that’s a huge mis-title, huh?
The scene is a hurricane party at somebody’s spare mansion in the part of the country that gets no cell service when the lights go out. Six young people and Lee Pace have showed up for a weekend of partying, but Pete Davidson is determined to ruin it because Lee is totally hot for an old guy.
Don’t worry, these are the first two bodies; the film is about the five women, most notably Bee (Maria Bakalova) an Eastern European lesbian dragged to the gathering by her girlfriend Sophie (Amandla Stenberg). Lacking for fun things to do in anticipation of losing power, the gang decides on a game of Bodies Bodies Bodies, which –I’m guessing- is a regional version of Mafia or Werewolf or whatever game you like to play where party people pretend to be killers and corpses. These seven sorta-random humans play this game for “fun” even though everybody who has played before acknowledges that the game succeeds in just one direction: pissing people off.
This is a horror film, so you know people playing corpses sooner or later yields to actual corpses. Luckily, the first one is Pete Davidson; his jealous act proved so cringe I couldn’t wait to see his throat cut. Ahh, but here’s the problem … who did it, like, for real? Is one of you a killer?
The best part of this film is the accusations and paranoia to follow. If you were sequestered in a house where one of you is a murderer and the power goes out, well, how would you react? I’d remain thankful that Pete Davidson was not among the survivors. After that, however, I grew bored of the circumstance and the feeling that not one of the people at the party resembles a killer in any way … and yet there are still going to be Bodies Bodies Bodies before this thing ends, huh?
There are body count horror films in which you want to know what’s going on. There are body count horror films in which you want survivors … and then there are body count horror 
films in which you’re kinda rooting for everybody to die so the film will end. Bodies Bodies Bodies struck me as the latter. In retrospect, the key moment in the film literally had no time to happen … nor would it have happened in context. And while it made perfect sense given how difficult it was to pick out a killer among the women, as it made no little in the context of the screenplay, it gave me the overwhelming feeling that this film is overrated overrated overrated.
Hmm, how do I explain this? Suppose you’re watching The Shawshank Redemption and at the beginning of the film Andy’s lawyer proves that Andy couldn’t have committed the murder and Andy is acquitted … but then he gets sent to Shawshank prison anyway; how would that make you feel about the film? OK, now apply that to a something less “classic” and more “teen slasher.” That’s Bodies Bodies Bodies.
Edit: After reading Wikipedia, I concede that I could be wrong about the timeline. I don’t think I am, but I concede it’s a possibility. OK, let us suppose body #1 happened exactly as the film dictated … how did body #3 happen, huh? Please tell me how and why that person died, because in my mind, that mystery went unsolved; I feel justified in my distaste.
A “comic” horror with nary a laugh
Where the suspects proved no-wheat-all-chaff
I conclude with this dictum
I have discovered the victim
They killed a solid hour-and-a-half
Rated R, 94 Minutes
Director: Halina Reijn
Writer: Sarah DeLappe, Kristen Roupenian
Genre: Slasher slasher slasher
Type of being most likely to enjoy this film: Rotten tomatoes, it seems
Type of being least likely to enjoy this film: Me, I’m guessing
