Bodies Bodies Bodies is one of A24’s horror feature films released this year, and is the directorial debut of Halina Reijn, a Dutch actress. The story is a fun and entertaining horror narrative that can grab the audience from the get-go with its eccentric group of main characters. The film was very well directed and had some creative interesting elements, especially the use of different lighting techniques to inform the characters and make entertaining shots as well as enhancing the claustrophobia of this story which happens in only one location.

Bodies Bodies Bodies follows a group of wealthy young adults that get together in one of their mansions to have a hurricane party (which is exactly what it sounds like, a party during a hurricane). Tensions are high as the night begins, and that’s when they decided to play a game where one person is the killer, and the others have to find out who is it, called ‘bodies bodies bodies.’ When the lights go out, the game becomes a reality, and the already troubled group will have to face a lot of things in the dark.

MOVIEWEB VIDEO OF THE DAY

This very self-aware blend of horror and comedy, with a group of sarcastic young adults as the narrative’s central element, is something that has been done before, most notably in another great meta horror comedy, the first Scream movie. It was released in the late ’90s and clearly influenced many later films – including Bodies Bodies Bodies. Ironically, both films suffered a similar criticism when they weren’t being praised, and it had a lot to do with older generations looking down at younger ones, but if anything, these movies use satire to make their own generational criticisms.

Here is how these movies take different and similar approaches to make generational criticism, as well as other elements that they share.

Gen X vs Gen Z in Scream and Bodies

     Dimension Films

The first Scream movie came out in 1996. Four movies later, Scream is one of the most loved horror franchises, still making films today (with a highly-anticipated sixth movie coming out in 2023). It stands out from the others because of how it used horror genre conventions, especially slasher movies, to tell its own story about a group of teenagers that represent Generation X in the ’90s. As we advance to 2022, Bodies Bodies Bodies does a very similar job of pointing the finger at today’s young adult generation, called Gen Z.

Scream focuses a lot on stereotypical teenage cliques that were common back then in high schools and their behaviors. The idea of wanting to fit in and adhere to social norms (even if that norm has become rebelling against previous norms) is used in the movie to explain who these characters are. The stereotypes worked really well because they are also a part of the slasher movie subgenre, except this time, the characters were self-aware (the virgin, the loose one, the intelligent nerd, the suspicious one, and so on). Scream existed in the age of irony, and deeply connected to fans and critics of that generation who were well aware of all the tropes.

     A24

Bodies Bodies Bodies is made for a very different audience and deals with a problem that didn’t exist in the last century but is wholly indicative of Millennials and Gen Z: social media. The power that it has over these characters is overwhelming, and (without giving any spoilers) can have striking consequences.

One of the biggest differences between the films is how sexuality and sex are approached. While there is the joke about having sex and being killed in a horror movie, Scream deals with these topics with much taboo involved. When it comes to the 2022 film, however, Bodies Bodies Bodies’ opening scene shows how much progress the conversation about sexual desire has evolved in the recent past, and just how much more open sexuality is for Gen Z.

Comedy and Horror

Another element that works tremendously well in both movies is the blend of horror and comedy. While both deal with high stakes and strong emotions, it is safe to affirm how much Scream influenced horror movies so that Bodies Bodies Bodies could exist so many years later. There is a lack of seriousness in Scream that makes the narrative fresh and fun, which was quite different from most of the horror movies being produced back in the late ’90s. This comes mostly from the snappy remarks the characters make about themselves and how predictable horror movies (like the one they are in) are. In many ways, Scream was a Gen X manifesto — “We’re over it,” the film seemed to say. “We’ve seen it all before, and we’re bored.”

On the contrary, the comedic element in Bodies Bodies Bodies comes from how the characters behave in the opposite way. The characters in the Halina Reijn film take themselves tremendously seriously and treat everything like the end of the world, which makes them so much fun to watch (or so much easier to make fun of). This has a direct correlation to the different generations and how they deal with these types of subjects. Even when they are playing a game, they turn it into a serious matter that transforms itself into a huge argument about things that bother them about one another in real life. There’s a loneliness in Bodies Bodies Bodies; deep inside, each character doesn’t really seem to like anyone but themselves.

Slasher vs Whodunit

While these movies have various similarities, there is one startling difference in how they use horror. Scream is a very on-the-nose slasher, with multiple violent deaths happening on screen. There is also the clear final girl who is supposed to beat the villain that is targeting her and her group of friends – for an unknown reason. Much of Scream works like a classic slasher film, with a story that takes place over several days, mostly following the main final girl character.

Bodies Bodies Bodies couldn’t be more different in that regard. The film is a classic bottle movie, in that they are having a party in the middle of a hurricane in a mansion, and most of the action takes place in that one location. The narrative resembles Agatha Christie’s whodunit stories more than slasher films like Friday The 13th. While there are deaths that happen on screen in Bodies Bodies Bodies, there are also a few that the audience doesn’t get to see, only finding the bodies after it happened. Weirdly enough, Bodies is much more sexual, while Scream is arguably more violent. Nonetheless, the endings of both films are surprising and contribute to each movie’s exploration or criticism of their respective generations.