Bodies Bodies Bodies (2022)

Score: 4 / 5

It may not be the most dangerous game, literarily speaking, but it certainly is one! Bodies Bodies Bodies is the latest A24 film to grace us with its existence, and thank heaven it's here to usher us from summer blockbuster season to spooky season. What do we even call this genre mashup? It was billed as a slasher, and in some ways it is very much that. But it's also, formally, a murder mystery and -- most surprising to me -- a sort of bildungsroman of Gen Z mentality. It opens, as comparatively no wide releases do, with a sensual kiss between two young women of different skin tones; we're fully absorbed into a world of naturalized queerness from the outset, and it's not even particularly sexual or creepy. There's a lovely warm glow to their passionate lip-locking, and though it's definitely not the vibe of the film to follow, it effectively sets up that this is a progressive film that doesn't even need to verbally address the typical baloney that often accompanies queer characters. Brava, and now on to the film!

It doesn't take long for us to realize, despite the racially diverse and mostly queer cast, none of the characters are particularly likable. The two girls are Sophie (Amandla Stenberg of The Hate U Give, Dear Evan Hansen) and Bee (Maria Bakalova, a newcomer after that Borat movie), a somewhat recently established young couple on their way to a "hurricane party." That's right, the kind of fabulous and stupid idea rich people come up with to ignore problems; it went well for Prince Prospero in Poe's short story about the Red Death. Sophie comes from a wealthy family, and the party will be hosted by an old friend of hers who is also sickeningly rich, the goofy delinquent David (Pete Davidson, of course). Shortly after they arrive -- unannounced and somewhat unwanted after no RSVP and some teenage drama -- the rain begins to fall and lightning cracks across the sky. Time to get indoors, right?

Maybe, but it's not so comfortable in the stately mansion with so many large personalities. David's girlfriend Emma is there (Chase Sui Wonders), as are a clueless podcaster named Alice (a magnificent Rachel Sennott of Shiva Baby) and her shockingly older ex-vet boy toy Greg (a perversely jubilant Lee Pace), and the mysterious but aggressive Jordan (Myha'la Herrold). They may all be used to wealth, but they're also extremely petty, bitter, and jaded; passive-aggressive arguments begin immediately about group chats and etiquette for attending parties. Jordan seems to have romantic feelings for Sophie -- their past is confirmed soon enough -- and the kids are all a little too attached to their precious phones. They are very much meant to stand in for voices of their generation, and the first third of the film is mostly played as comedic, showcasing the ridiculous preoccupations of supposedly woke young adults when they are left to their own amusement.

Booze and pills and cocaine flow freely until night falls, when it's time to play an infamous murder-mystery party game "Bodies Bodies Bodies." It sounds a bit like a secret killer game mixed with something like hide-and-seek, but there is no stopping the suspicions and revelations with so many substances in their systems. This is the kind of self-conscious horror movie that made Scream work, but writers Sarah DeLappe and Kristen Roupenian don't want to fit the mold entirely. Borrowing heavily from the 2005 cult hit Cry Wolf, they play off our expectations of the genre, melding self-aware comedy and cultural critiques with slasher aesthetic and a whodunnit plot. Because, in case you wondered where all this was going, bodies do indeed start to fall.

I won't summarize any more of the plot because a primary joy here is in trying to figure things out along with the characters. Are they being pranked by one of their own, as in Knives Out -- perhaps by that older creep Greg, or the playboy addict David -- or could a killer be among them, like the mysterious stranger (and arguable protagonist) Bee, about whom we know as little as anyone else? Are they being stalked from without, a la You're Next, or is this some weird dynastic thing among the young and rich, as in Ready or Not? As the hurricane rages on, more bodies drop; more fascinating, if less engaging, are the screenplay and acting, which highlight the vapid love-hate relationship we all share with social media and, by extension, with each other.

Director Halina Reijn (in her English-language directorial debut) could be accused here of hating Gen Z, but I think her work is much more nuanced and sensitive than that. In fact, I might be inclined to argue that, while she is lampooning certain aspects of culture, she is in fact doing crucial work of bridging a generational gap: encouraging artistic dialogue between high-brow art (A24 may produce many things, but nobody can dispute its prolific titles' place in cinematic excellence) and younger generations. It's almost gleefully nihilistic in its dialogue, yes, and also in its attitude toward the characters, an intentional choice to ironically embrace accusations hurled at horror films for the past few decades. There are plenty of effective scares and lots of moody broody angst -- major thanks to cinematographer Jasper Wolf and music by Disasterpeace -- but the ultimate pleasure of this film is in its twist climax and denouement. I can hardly wait to rewatch with subtitles to capture and appreciate the nasty dialogue, its fabulous turns and dares, and of course to better appreciate the masterful performances even more by knowing what we finally know. This is, indeed, not a safe space.

Dear Evan Hansen (2021)

Score: 3 / 5

One of the most troubling musicals ever produced -- after, what, maybe Carousel? -- Dear Evan Hansen has finally made it to the silver screen. As such, it's finally reaching a much wider audience than simply those of us who had listened to the soundtrack for the last four years or so. Of course, with each new project by composers Benj Pasek and Justin Paul (The Greatest Showman, La La Land, Aladdin), their fanbase has grown. But seeing the famed musical from top to bottom reveals that it's distinctly darker than their other works, and its story by Steven Levenson (Fosse/Verdon, the upcoming tick, tick...Boom!) is really, truly problematic. And not simply in the "that didn't age well" kind of cynically postmodern way; it grapples with intense and urgent issues before coming to a conclusion that, well, feels deeply unsatisfying. As the ending attempts to assuage any complicit guilt from the audience it also bravely faces the consequences of its own plot points. One has to wonder if the full presentation in such an accessible medium has influenced its less than warm critical and popular reception.

But we're getting ahead of ourselves. In case you didn't already know, the film starts by introducing us to the title character, Evan, who is about to head off to school despite his debilitating social anxiety. We learn immediately that his mother, working a lot to support the two of them, is struggling to connect with Evan, but exhorts him to follow his therapist's advice and write letters to himself with attainable goals and words of encouragement. He wears a cast on his left arm, broken after falling from a tree in flashbacks presented to us ad nauseam during the film, although it's not until very late that -- SPOILER ALERT -- we learn that particular episode was in fact a suicide attempt brought on by Evan's equally debilitating depression. That revelation is the final emotional climax in a movie filled with similar twists of the knife. In case you weren't getting the idea, this is not a razzle-dazzle romp through high school.

In fact, and this is where I take some issue with Stephen Chbosky's adaptation of the musical, the film seems almost intent on making everything really fucking depressing for us as well as for the characters. With the exceptions of the opening number ("Waving Through a Window," one of the best songs in musical theatre in the last decade) and the letter-writing number ("Sincerely Me"), every song is despondent and sentimental, sickly both in emotional weight and in tempo. My indignation was piqued in the first few minutes because, even though "Waving" is a great opening number, the film cuts one of my favorite -- and notably upbeat -- songs entirely: "Anybody Have a Map," sung by the two mother characters. Similarly, nearer the climax, the film cuts "Good for You," a biting -- and also upbeat -- number that propels three distinct character choices in the stage musical.

Instead of including these numbers to help the momentum of the film, Chbosky just slices them in favor of lengthy dialogue scenes that feel, if possible, more morose and melodramatic than the songs. Even the two new musical inclusions, "The Anonymous Ones" (co-written with Amandla Stenberg, the actress who sings it) and "A Little Closer" are really slow and sad, far more about internalized character study than externalized character (or plot) development. Sacrificing story is just not a great model for any musical, especially one that has a lot of story to tell. The languid pace does more than just make the movie a bit of a sluggish experience: because each song is designed to pull at your tear ducts, I spent far too much of this overlong movie crying silently into my facemask. But, by the end of it, I felt less like I had experienced catharsis and more like I had been emotionally gaslighted.

And that's because -- as you might have gleaned from my first paragraph -- the screenplay is really, really weird. It forces us almost immediately to identify and empathize with Evan, through what we see as his weaknesses or flaws or relatability. Then we learn that he's not actually a great kid, and that his impulses are troubling; though it's clear he gets guilted or otherwise awkwardly shoehorned into making some of his bad decisions, the lies flow a little too freely. It's not a simple "yes" when the truth is "no," it's elaborate yarn-spinning, fable-fabricating, and it happens more than once. Soon enough, as a local tragedy spins into a spectacle -- and we really do have to question the overly dramatic response of the other school kids and townsfolk, who apparently never reached out to help before the tragedy -- Evan, caught in his lies, adeptly navigates tumultuous emotions for incredibly selfish personal gain. The tragedy, in which a relative stranger to Evan named Connor kills himself, leads Evan into Connor's family's home and hearts, until he finally lays claim to Connor's sister Zoe, a girl for whom he has been pining in silence.

The performances of the cast are uniformly excellent -- despite the screenplay's attempted hamstringing of the mothers, Amy Adams and Julianne Moore, who both steal their scenes -- and Ben Platt's awkward teenager persona, brilliantly translated from stage to screen, belies his breathtakingly angelic voice. What's interesting, though, is that on the surface, atop his layers of transformative makeup, he's actually quite grotesque. In a movie filled with profoundly flawed, human characters that could just as easily step into a scene from This is Us, Evan is so calculated and caricatured on a purely visual level, and so accomplished vocally, that he feels like he's from a totally different world. Moreover, Evan's devious methodology reveals him to be what we might loosely consider an antihero; we want him to succeed even as he fully deserves any comeuppance heading his way. Evan plays along with the public charade, gaining fame, family, and love he apparently always wanted and never got. All because a stranger, a high schooler, killed himself.

Honestly, if this same movie were presented to us in a different color scheme, let's say cooler and filled with greens or blues (the amber Hallmark-esque cinematography is unforgivably overwhelming), and if the score were occasionally in a minor key, it would probably feel like something akin to a thriller or black comedy. We'd recognize Evan for the troubled and troubling character he is, and fewer tears would fall as we inched closer to the end of our seats, waiting for him to snap. To be fair, Evan isn't the only heebie-jeebies-inducing person on screen; the film's climax begins when his friend Alanna (Stenberg), who has spearheaded the vigils and campaign to memorialize Connor, outright betrays Evan and publishes his most private letter to the world. Up to that point, she's easily the most decent person in town, and suddenly she destroys whatever sympathetic credibility she has. I mean, come on, who wrote this story, and why?

I'm going to have to do some looking for Levenson interviews to see exactly what the hell he was thinking when he wrote the book of this musical. I can only imagine the filmmakers here were trying to identify with young people struggling with mental health, but there is little direct attempt to honestly deal with those issues here. The depression and suicide elements have the opposite problem of !3 Reasons Why in that they are so vague as to be rendered almost irrelevant; the anxiety issues take center stage, and the characters do everything wrong regarding it. And the movie about emotional manipulation, itself structured manipulatively, can't quite wave through the window at us. It's beautiful and challenging and heartfelt, and those are great things. It'll make you cry, it'll make you cringe, and then it'll leave you reeling about what really happened to your heart. And that's just not my cuppa.

The Hate U Give (2018)

Score: 3.5 / 5

What? A young adult drama that doesn't take place in space? No witches or vampires? It's actually sensitive to real issues faced by teens? And it's both relevant and timely?!

The Hate U Give, titled from a mantra often repeated in the film ("The hate u give little infants fucks everybody"), serves as an acronym as well. The film indeed examines what "thug life" means, albeit from a specific, bourgeois perspective. Following Starr, a young black woman living in a fairly poor black neighborhood, the film launches into issues of class, race, and activism in a story that feels ripped from the headlines. Actually, there are several direct references to current events that help the film embed itself into a lively imaginative space.

At the urging of her parents, Starr attends a private, affluent, almost exclusively white school. She is keenly aware of her double consciousness: her vocabulary, inflection, attire, demeanor, and interactions change dramatically when she's at school compared with when she's in her neighborhood. The kids at school appropriate what they assume to be "thug" phrases, music, dance, and attitudes to try and connect with her, not aware that she's performing too. The kids in her neighborhood tease her about being too white when she attends their parties.

But all is not identity performance when this drama takes a deadly turn. Starr reconnects with a former flame, Khalil, while out for a drive one night; they are pulled over by a police officer who brutally murders the unarmed young man, thinking his hairbrush was a weapon. In this moment, Starr becomes a witness, not only mindful of the chasm her life straddles but determined to address it. Her life is changed, her community is galvanized.

I really liked the film. It proves young adult stories don't have to be swamped in genre trappings and dripping with immaturity; they don't need sci-fi jargon or fantasy experiments to get their points across. At the same time, they don't need to be hypersexual or obsessed with attempting to assume prurient adult interests. This one is arresting in its strength and sense of purpose, and it is doing some really admirable cultural work. Too, its craftsmanship is palpable. Amandla Stenberg delivers a killer performance as Starr, and her supporting cast are great. It's not saturated with artificial light and sentimental music (Twilight), it doesn't sacrifice anything to spectacle (virtually any YA sci-fi), and while it doesn't unrealistically portray the reality of its protagonist (Love, Simon) it does cater to a fairly specific audience.

Unfortunately, I was also distinctly underwhelmed. Despite some theoretically interesting identity performance issues, the beginning of the film crawls along on its righteous way. I wasn't fully engaged in the picture until the final third of the movie, when protest marches hit the streets and Starr learns to develop her own voice. Even when this happens, though, the film remains firmly about her. My preference is less with the individual and more with the community; I would have wanted something a bit more like Detroit in operatic scope. But, for a comparatively domestic story about personal identity, this movie works just fine.

When a single episode of American Crime (season one, in case you wondered) can depict a more complete, complex, emotional, and devastating view of a race riot than an entire feature film, you know the movie isn't as effective as it could (or should) be.

IMDb: The Hate U Give