Bodies Bodies Bodies

Pretty young things turn ugly when people stop being polite ... and start getting real.

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As a dude who digs far more of A24’s horror output than he doesn’t, I was eagerly anticipating its latest offering “Bodies Bodies Bodies” (available in theaters beginning Friday, Aug. 12). “BBB” isn’t a horror film so much as it is a social satire, though it still sports horrific elements. The youthful nature of the picture also made this 40-year-old critic feel like he was 100. In spite of this all, I really enjoyed the movie … it’s like Agatha Christie by way of “Heathers,” “Spring Breakers” and “Ready or Not.”

Newly-formed couple Sophie (Amandla Stenberg, they were Rue in “The Hunger Games”!!!) and Bee (Maria Bakalova, “Borat Subsequent Moviefilm”) arrive at the hurricane house party of Sophie’s longtime friend David (Pete Davidson). Other guests include David’s aspiring actress girlfriend Emma (Chase Sui Wonders of Sofia Coppola’s “On the Rocks”), prospective podcaster Alice (Rachel Sennott, “Shiva Baby”), Alice’s older boyfriend Greg (Lee Pace) and hella sassy lassie Jordan (Myha’la Herrold from HBO’s “Industry”).

Sophie isn’t exactly a welcome guest to the festivities as she’s ghosted her friends and their group chat since going to rehab to get clean. David’s bacchanal is probably the last place Sophie should be as her homies are drinking, popping, smoking and snorting anything at their disposal.

As the weather worsens, the pals decide to play Bodies Bodies Bodies (also known as Body Body), a game in which one person is given a card that denotes them as the killer. The lights are then turned off and everyone crawls around armed with flashlights. The murderer kills their prey by tapping them on the back, leaving them for dead. Once one of the other players discovers the “corpse” they holler, “Bodies bodies bodies,” the lights come back on and the remaining players attempt to ferret out the killer’s identity … only this time bodies begin dropping for real.

“BBB” is the second feature from Dutch actress-turned-director Halina Reijn after the 2019 Carice van Houten vehicle “Instinct.” (Reijn co-starred with van Houten in Paul Verhoeven’s “Black Book” and Bryan Singer’s “Valkyrie.”) The script is written by first-time screenwriter Sarah DeLappe working from a story by Kristen Roupenian.

The characters may not have much going on in their heads, but the movie in which they appear certainly does. Topics ranging from gaslighting to getting triggered to toxicity to allyship to race relations to class disparities are addressed at great length. The characters seem as if they’re regurgitating something heard in one of their college courses or seen on Twitter without fully comprehending what they’re saying, which makes these words all the funnier.

In spite of almost every character being unlikable, the performers do an admirable job playing them. I was especially impressed by Davidson’s David and Sennott’s Alice as they’re arguably the funniest of the bunch. (I haven’t seen Sennott’s star-making turn in “Shiva Baby,” but very much want to now after hearing nothing but good things about it and being wowed by her work here.)

On the technical side of things I must give kudos to cinematographer Jasper Wolf (he also shot Reijn’s “Instinct” and his practical lighting here is a wonder to behold) and to composer Disasterpeace for another evocative score that differentiates itself from the recent “Marcel the Shell with Shoes On” and hews much closer to past genre effort “It Follows.”

A last-minute twist makes you rethink everything that came before it and makes the proceedings all the more darkly hilarious. Our characters aren’t innocent per se, but they aren’t entirely guilty either … mostly they’re indicative of reactionary people living in reactionary times.