OK. Let’s rip this plaster off. This writer has often shown his contempt towards those online film pundits who treat the very mere presence of the A24 logo as some sort of Messiah complex. This came up a little bit earlier in the year with Alex garland’s disastrous men but here it is crystallised at its nadir. with the completely irredeemable Bodies, Bodies Bodies.
Maria Bakalova and Amandla Stenberglead lead a team of toxic teenagers as they play a game of Bodies, Bodies, Bodies during a hurricane. The only thing is that a killer might be in their midst. That’s it. The film markets itself as some sort of satire but appears to have no target beyond the very vague presence of “zoomers, man”. It has no defined targets or thesis beyond knowing these people are insufferable and expecting an audience who wouldn’t know what populism is if it slapped them in the face like a wet fish to lap it up. They will deflect any criticism of this pile of bilge with” it’s ironic man” as rapidly as the characters on screen. Anything that outright requires the shield of irony as a distinct explanation as the sole reason for why a piece of media works for an audience is a conceptual failure. This isn’t Amazon’s The Boys, In that case, the deliberately irredeemable characters are simply a foundation to set up intriguingly well-developed mechanics and world-building. Eric Kripke and his team know when to push buttons but also know when they can fall back on ridiculously solid fundamental strengths. Or even a Succession where after a season this viewer could acknowledge some level of objective quality in the snide way the Roy family banterer with each other. Even if this viewer questioned what possible evolution there could be (haven’t seen the following seasons.)
Bodies, Bodies, Bodies has none of those excuses purely because what it attempts to plaster onto an incredibly thin attempted ironic satire to the bare minimum of genre conventions for this variety of horror. There’s also the fact that this kind of teen discourse has limited extensions beyond a purely online space. This viewer was left with the impression that you’d have to be within a very niche circle that could perhaps be divided up even further. Anyone not immersed in this world with half a brain cell has better things to do with their lives. The most infuriating thing about watching this pathetic excuse for a dumpster fire is knowing that it will have strong defenders who live inside of a different variation of the very privileged Film Festival-type bubble the film is attempting to poke fun at. These people deliberately poke holes in anything that might have even been seen by a wider audience and are truly flabbergasted that no one wants to watch their obscurer 3-hour indie film. Some of these can be good but the sense of gatekeeping among those films that latch on within similar spaces( as Bodies, Bodies bodies has done) Has genuinely put this writer off attempting to ever sell his film writing/ reviewing ability to an audience again.
Bodies, Bodies, Bodies is completely vile in the least interesting way possible. A devastatingly one-dimensional, thinly veiled attempt at satire. Focusing on the sort of team targets that do not exist outside of social media. The defensive shield of irony is on display from minute one. The film is so lacking in any major substance beyond the thinnest of genre tropes, there’s so little to be ironic about. The worst element of this viewing experience was watching this excruciating disaster play out on screen knowing that it will have defenders Despite it being fundamentally divorced from any audiences beyond themselves. The Gwyneth Paltrow vagina candle of film hipster culture. An insufferable pile of one-dimensional nonsense Random blue checkmarks on Twitter will tell viewers it’s some kind of ragingly daring deconstruction. It’s not. A24 and distributors of its ilk need to stop idolising films like this as opposed to the genuinely brilliant talents they have given and platform and distribution. The Daniels, the Saftie Brothers and Bo Burnham to name the three most obvious.
0/10
A Little Bit Of Everything 