Tonight’s October Challenge Review is the Horror Comedy “Totally Killer” from Amazon MGM Studios and Blumhouse, released direct to streaming on Amazon this year. This is from Nahnatchka Khan, a comedy writer/producer/director in her first foray into Horror and her second feature movie as director. Written by the team of David Matalon, Sasha Perl-Raver and Jen D’Angelo, the latter of which being the most experienced. This is a team clearly coming from TV comedy backgrounds, but sometimes people can surprise you so let’s see if this movie does.
Back to the Screaming.
The movie stars Kiernan Shipka (Who played Sabrina Spellman in the darker 2018 Sabrina reboot series) as Jamie Hughes. The main support comes from Olivia Holt (Dagger from the Cloak and Dagger series) as the younger version of Jamie’s mother “Olivia”. The movie obviously takes influence from “Back to the Future”, “Scream”, “Heathers” and 80’s nostalgia in general, but also seems very similar to the 2015 movie “Final Girls”, though it’s unclear if that is intentional. In regards to the other influence though these are all referenced directly or indirectly in the movie.
The starts at the 35th anniversary of a spree of murders by a killer called “The Sweet Sixteen Killer”. A killer that was never caught (Disappearing after the original three murders) and who was famous for wearing a BIlly Idol/Max Headroom mask and stabbing his victims 16 times. After Jamie’s mother is murdered the town assumes the same killer has returned. After being chased by the killer into an amusement park Jamie takes refuge in her friends experimental time machine and ends up going back in time to the 1980’s where she attempts to prevent the murders and stop the killer, with the primary goal of saving her mother.
Culture Clash.
This is a fish out of water film, where Jamie faces constant culture shock at the differences between the 80’s and the modern day. The lack of caution and security when doing things, people being politically incorrect and even the weaker marijuana. This is the source of most of the comedy and for the most part it lands quite well. Along with this Jamie having to deal with the fact her parents weren’t always the mature responsible over protective types they are now. Indeed her first interaction with her mother is getting a dodge ball to the face from her.
This all works pretty well, though is perhaps a little overplayed in places. The only exception really is her friend who put together the time machine and her mother who are pretty much duplicates of each other (And it is her friends mother that helps her out in the past). That makes the pair the least interesting characters who are basically there just to facilitate the time travel. The rest of the characters though are a colorful goofy bunch that fits the tone of the film well.
90’s Slasher In An 80’s Setting
In regards to the horror/mystery aspect, it was pretty easy to figure out who the killer was. Not from the plot itself as they don’t reveal the key fact that would have made it obvious until after the killer is revealed, but instead by the way the character is presented in the story. It only really made sense they were introduced for the purpose of ending up as the killer, though I do have to praise how they tried to use elements specific to the mask to throw people off the scent, but it didn’t work. It’d be spoilers to say much more about the murders so I’ll leave that one there, but suffice to say there are no shocks in the reveal.
This is base level, Scream knock off stuff (On the level of most 90’s slashers). it’s clear though that this isn’t the focus of the story, even though it’s the driving element of the plot. There was nothing particular of note in any of the kills and there wasn’t a great deal in the way of stalking or anything along the way. The killer isn’t really scary and even when we are first introduced to them they mostly get their ass kicked by their victim (Which is especially reminiscent of the Scream series).
Then and Now and Then Again.
The movie’s approach to time travel is one of convenience. It still has the characters in the original timeline get a linear run of updates to their timeline that happens to match events happening in the film. This is obviously done to cover up the events yet to happen in the film, but it doesn’t really make that much sense. The irony here is the film takes a shot at Back to the Future’s take on time travel and then lays down it’s own rules that don’t make much more sense.
We are told that should her parents not get together that she will persist as a character out of time and yet that is merely one theory on time travel. Yet, the entire existence of the “Grandfather Paradox” is evidence this is a debate and not fact. Indeed the main theory of persistence is based on multiple timelines and if this movie was doing that the characters at her exit point wouldn’t notice any changes and as soon as some were made they would have been isolated from their friend. The truth is the convenience of Marty’s photograph wasn’t any less unscientific than the minute by minute updating of the past/future in this film.
Conclusion
Overall this is a fun but flawed movie. It’s strength is it’s comedy and not for the horror or science fiction aspects. You can tell this is from a team of comedy writers simply using horror as their theme. It’s also very hard not to compare this movie to “Final Girls” as despite that involving characters getting sucked into a movie instead of using time travel, they share a very similar plots. Ultimately though Final Girls is the superior movie and a good part of that is it seemed to understand the genre better. As a Horror this would be a high 5/10, as a comedy it would be a solid 6/10 so I’ll balance that out with a high 5.5/10. If you have Amazon Prime then it won’t cost you anything to view and you’ll probably get a laugh out of it.
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