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Bodies Bodies Bodies, Internet Culture, and Gross Privilege

The following contains spoilers for Bodies Bodies Bodies.


Is Bodies Bodies Bodies a slasher? Is it a mystery? Is it both? Whatever it is, the road it walks is paved with our present-day internet culture, the effects of gross privilege, and what both of those things can do to our relationships and our brains.

Emma (Chase Sui Wonders), a pale girl with long, straight dark hair, in a bathrobe with her hands around her boyfriend, David (Pete Davidson), a pale boy with buzzed dark brown hair and dark eyes, one of which appears to be bruised. He is also wearing a white bathrobe. He is holding a wrapped pan of zucchini bread. They are outside in overcast light, sitting on red cushioned pool chairs with yellow and white striped pillows. Forest greenery can be seen in the background along with a yellow poolside umbrella.
When I first saw this I arrived to the screening late and missed David’s story about his black eye, so on my that viewing I didn’t even notice it.

Bodies Bodies Bodies could have easily presented a problem I have with many movies dealing with these themes: the dialogue. Movies and shows like this are usually riddled with buzzwords and phrasing built to establish a modern setting, and more often than not this ages the material by coming off like a robot wrote it (I had this exact issue with the 2021 rebirth of Gossip Girl). Thankfully, Bodies Bodies Bodies dodges this problem by understanding the absurdity of its dialogue. Characters say verbatim, “don’t say that, that’s so ableist,” “mental health is SO important,” “you trigger me,” all interjected into otherwise serious, believable conversations. The lines feel out of place because it is unusual for that terminology to make it into conversation outside of Twitter, and the seriousness with which they’re said makes them funny.

As for the characters uttering this dialogue, they can be organized into individual stereotypes of social-media-obsessed 20somethings. You have Sophie (Amandla Stanberg), who has a history of mental instability; Bee (Maria Bakalova), the innocent “good girl” who calls her mom all the time; Jordan (Myha’la Herrold), the self-righteous one with a superiority complex; David (Pete Davidson), the insecure man who doesn’t subscribe to modern day “wokeness”; and then Alice (Rachel Sennott) and Emma (Chase Sui Wonders), the self-absorbed and the wannabe… I guess. I have trouble distinguishing their individual roles, as it felt like they could have replaced one with the other and the movie would have been the same. There’s also Greg (Lee Pace), Alice’s much older boyfriend, who I suppose serves as representation for the confused older generations thrust into the craziness of the young generation. Each person delivers a different kind of ridiculousness that has become standard in online interactions. They’re all mostly one-note, but Bodies Bodies Bodies serves as an example of how simplistic characters can be put to good use. A film with this runtime doesn’t have time to make everybody super fleshed-out, and it doesn’t attempt it, and it doesn’t need to. It wants to make a point (or two, or three), and only needs reasonably flat characters to make it/them.

The common thread is that most of the time, none of them know what they’re talking about. Maybe David was right; maybe Emma doesn’t know the proper usage of the term “gaslight”—in fact, it’s likely. Jordan preaches about and relishes in being the “lower class” friend when her family is comfortably in the upper middle class, as declared by Alice. The digital world, while all-encompassing, can be more isolating than enriching. Every character always has their phone, never letting go of the endless daydream the devices represent. The phones never die, either; no one ever frets about battery life. They are so far gone that their illusions are immortal. They have been absorbed into a distorted world of their own making, and maybe what they say makes sense in this world, but any rational viewer will be able to identify it as lunacy.

The scene where Jordan shoots Alice in the leg for challenging her view of herself as, as Alice puts it, a “rags to riches” type, best exemplifies this distortion. At this point, the film is down to four characters: Bee, Sophie, Alice, and Jordan. Jordan has the only identified gun in the house. She is pointing the gun at Alice while Sophie and Bee watch. Alice receives a bullet hole through the leg from an infuriated Jordan. Following is a flurry of, “why did you shoot me?” “What the f***?” “Why did you do that?”, to which Jordan replies, “no I didn’t”. She fiercely rejects the idea that she could have done something wrong, to the point of the highest degree of blasphemy. These characters, Jordan most of all, cannot have their illusion of their life questioned. They can’t be wrong; they can’t be anything less than what they believe they are.

Sophie, a black girl with pale-brown skin and blonde braids, wearing a sheer green, tan, and white tie-dyed shirt, a black leather bra, moss green tank top, and shell necklace, splattered with mud, kneeling on the poolside after the storm next to her girlfriend, Bee. Bee (Maria Bakalova) is a white woman with dirty blonde hair wearing a dark blue hoodie, also splattered with mud. They are looking at a phone with a white and black spotted case.
Sophie and Bee.

We all know “show don’t tell”. If we went by what the characters told us, we would believe they’re best friends who love one another. But if we go by show, people who love each other do not treat each other or talk about each other the way these characters do. There is so much they detest about one another. They can’t share a room for one night without one relationship or another exploding on account of one or both parties behaving like a lunatic with a grudge.

They shoot at low-hanging fruit with each other, demonstrating not only their immaturity and lack of intelligence, but underlying contempt for one another. Sophie is cruelly berated for her history of drug abuse. Emma’s status as an actress is used multiple times to discredit her. Bee is suspected because she’s a foreigner. They lunge at every opportunity to take a nip, as though they’re begging for a reason to tell any given character they’re horrible. Even the games they play are an outlet for aggression (i.e., the “slap drinking” game, where one person has to take a shot and slap the person next to them).

In the scene about Alice’s podcast, Sophie seems physically unable to withhold her true feelings by rolling her eyes and giving exasperated sighs each time Alice details the contents of her podcast. To be fair, the theme is worthy of eyerolls, but imagine caring so little about someone that you cannot even pretend to respect something they’re passionate about. And earlier, when the suggestion of playing bodies bodies bodies arises, Emma’s discomfort with the game is disregarded; everyone else’s good time is more important than her comfort, and she must also participate. These characters don’t know what it is to love someone as a friend.

This is representative of a phenomenon I’m quite familiar with. I have watched people remain friends with each other, even best friends, despite constant fighting and turmoil. The characters of Bodies Bodies Bodies are one such friend group. Why do they put up with each other if they hold so much contempt for one another? Why do they continue to claim love when hate is the most prominent emotion within the text? Perhaps it is out of desperation; if they do not have one another, who do they have? They say they have been friends “forever”, and maybe time has done more damage than they are willing to admit. They cling to each other for sake of familiarity, but they’re holding on to versions of each other who have long since died—and in the end, they’re really, really dead.

The movie caps off with the reveal that the only murders were those committed after the first body was found; David got himself killed trying to reenact Greg’s pop-the-champagne-with-a-sword trick (Pete Davidson seems to enjoy being the first to die in his films). And so, all the bloodshed was for nothing, and so were all the harsh words, and the screaming, and the tears. But it was going to happen anyway. A group of “friends” with a bond that fragile was bound to break apart eventually.

Emma, Alice (Rachel Sennott, a white girl with kinky dark brown hair wearing glowstick necklaces, a knit tank top and black leather jeans), Jordan (Myha'la Herrold, a black girl with updone brown hair wearing a dark blue sweater), Sophie, and Bee sitting in a circle inside the mansion. Rain pours outside, and the room is illuminated by various lamps and an assumed overhead light. The floor is covered in various noisily-designed rugs and the interior generally appears old-fashioned. Sophie has her face in her hands, though the energy of the picture is playful.
The girls in the living room.

Ultimately, this movie serves as a sort of mega-commentary on the bombardment of issues that have been amplified and altered into new states by internet culture. Privilege, unreality, self-absorption, insecurity, catastrophizing, identity, disrespect, selfishness, and just plain buffoonery are all on nonstop display in Bodies Bodies Bodies.

Also, it’s totally a slasher.

Written by Emma Gilbert

Emma Gilbert is a 22-year-old from North Carolina who has had a special interest in horror films since she was 14. She's been writing since she was 10 years old, encouraged by her family and friends all the way. Here, she hopes to entertain and enthrall you with trainwreck analyses and lame humor!

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