"Bodies Bodies Bodies" is what happens when you try to make a movie that winks knowingly at a done-to-death genre format — in this case, the one in which a group of attractive/stupid youths venture out to a remote cabin in the woods and find themselves beset by monsters or murderers — and, misunderstanding the attraction of such films, you don't quite pull it off. The genre is irredeemably cheesy, but you had intended to revitalize it with an overlay of irony and sarcasm, freshening it up for a new generation. How hard, you thought, could it be?
Well, in the case of "Bodies Bodies Bodies," harder than the filmmakers — Dutch director Halina Reijn and American writers Kristen Roupenian (mildly controversial author of the 2017 New Yorker short story "Cat Person") and Sarah DeLappe (a Pulitzer-nominated playwright) — appear to have anticipated. In approaching this heavily plowed narrative ground, it might have been helpful to accept that cheesiness is an important part of the genre's appeal, and so cutting back on it and overcompensating with cool-kid sass and attitude (in order to demonstrate your superiority to the form) is likely to backfire.
Which is what happens here, despite game performances by an ensemble cast that includes Rachel Sennott (a master of sass and attitude in the wonderful "Shiva Baby") and lovable Bulgarian Maria Bakalova (deservedly Oscar-nominated for her performance in Sacha Baron Cohen's "Borat Subsequent Moviefilm"). Pete Davidson is also on hand, playing a rich knucklehead named David, but the script — sparklingly satirical in its middle stretch, when it's taking aim at zoomer cultural cliches, but otherwise a bit draggy at both ends — gives him little sharp comic material to work with. Like Sennott, he's largely and disappointingly wasted.
The movie establishes its boldness bona fides with a long opening shot of a slurpy kiss between recent drug-rehab graduate Sophie (Amandla Stenberg) and her new girlfriend, Bee (Bakalova), who hails from somewhere in Eastern Europe. Sophie is bringing Bee to a "hurricane party" at a huge woodland estate owned by her friend David's absent family. There we meet David's actress-y girlfriend Emma (Chase Sui Wonders), rich-girl podcaster Alice (Sennot), her considerably older boyfriend Greg (Lee Pace) and an all-purpose tough chick named Jordan (Myha'la Herrold). There's also a character named Max, who's more talked about than seen.
All of these frivolous characters come from money, and most are not especially likable. They're not happy to have Sophie on hand, for obscure reasons, and they don't know what to make of Bee — who clearly does not come from money — at all. ("Are you from Moscow?" asks one woman. "Doctor Zhivago's my favorite film.") Nevertheless, as thunder rumbles and rain lashes down outside, a party atmosphere slowly gathers, fueled by booze, coke and vaping. Then a game is proposed: a lights-out murder-mystery exercise called "Bodies Bodies Bodies." The idea: one person is secretly designated the murderer, and everyone else tries to avoid getting "killed." The fun is conveniently intensified by the hurricane gods, who knock out the electricity and the cellphone service and Wi-Fi along with it.
At this point in a traditional cabin-in-the-woods story, bodies would start dropping and classic scares of the "Don't go down in the basement" variety — dopey but effective — would begin jumping out at us. Here, however, while we await further cheesiness, it never arrives — blood is spilled and innocent lives seep away with it, but the pro forma jolts of fear never come. There's a big reveal at the end of the picture that's not an especially big deal, and, if you ask me, not worth the sacrifice of the cheap thrills that make these sorts of movies fun.
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