Agatha Christie wrote the blueprint for this tale of upper-class murder and distrust almost a century ago, and her estate is gonna keep going to the bank for years to come because of it. With all that money, however, the only difference between Christie and the snobby, boorish characters she brought to bloody justice in her work was that she chose to see the world and put her earnings to respectable use. It’s the same bit of difference that sets her apart from the close-knit group of Gen Z’ers who all converge on a mansion in the woods during a hurricane in Halina Reijn’s remorseless whodunnit satire Bodies Bodies Bodies. Structurally speaking, it’s a film that’s been done countless times, which might sound like a drag for the always innovative A24, but that lack of originality is part of its perceptive charm, if only because the narrative is as unoriginal as the humorously suffocating trust-fund brats who descend upon it. Why do something no one’s ever done before? It’s not like anyone at this “hurricane party” would ever have the motivation to.
Then again, not everyone in this small bunch is a total airhead. The only true financial outlier, and the only one with much self-respect to speak of, is Bee (Maria Bakalova), an Eastern European member of the working class whose recently sober girlfriend, Sophie (Amandla Stenberg) has brought her to the home of her lifelong friend — one of the many words the film employs with a loose connotation — the obnoxiously short-tempered David (Pete Davidson). The bad blood gushes out almost instantly, as the rest of their group chat is surprised that Sophie would even think about showing her face after ghosting them post-rehab. Rounding out the awkward, affectionless energy is David’s actress girlfriend, Emma (Chase Sui Wonders); Sophie’s former flame, Jordan (Myha’la Herrold); and podcaster Alice (Rachel Sennott), who has brought her fortysomething Tinder match, Greg (Lee Pace), along for the ride. It’s clear that no one particularly likes one another and have stayed close for pure convenience, but for a group of young adults who will never have to work a day in their life, even bad company is better than no company at all.
It’s not too long before that bad blood turns to real blood when the storm shuts down the mansion’s power and the film’s titular game, an offshoot of other murder-based deduction games like Mafia and Werewolf, gets real and deadly real fast. It’s when the bodies begin to pile up that the film itself begins to come into its own, as Reijn and screenwriter Sarah DeLappe not only manage to craft a mystery that’ll keep you guessing until the final scene but gleefully cajole some deep-seated truth bombs out of people who would’ve otherwise kept them hidden beneath a shallow facade of TikTok dances and influencer lifestyles overwrought with self-interest and banal platitudes that have less meaning with each passing day. Bodies Bodies Bodies doesn’t skimp on the bloodshed, but it’s not meant to offer a visceral experience of terror. For these unenlightened, cocaine-addled hedonists, a bruised ego can kill twice as quickly as a slash to the throat or a bash to the head ever could.
Reijn works minimalistic wonders with cinematographer Jasper Wolf and his handheld camera, reinforcing the film’s singular setting and creating a dark maze that’s lit only by phone flashlights and glow stick necklaces. How fitting it is that not even a loss of power can deprive anyone of the benefits that come with being born in a digital age. With nowhere to go as the storm rages on outside, an even bigger one brews inside with no one able to leave their finger-pointing hypocrisy at the door. The film garners well-earned laughs as the impeccable cast of young talent lean hard into their characters’ holier-than-thou attitudes and bring any chance they have of sleuthing out the killer to a grinding halt. No one does this better than Rachel Sennott, who has what is easily the best comedic timing of the group as Alice, who’s also the most faux-woke. Bodies Bodies Bodies is nothing if not a showcase of her incredible range, as her use of words like “toxic,” “gaslighting,” and even “ally” as defense mechanisms are some of the funniest things she has to offer as someone her claustrophobic character in Shiva Baby (2021) would vehemently despise enough to “hate-listen” to her podcast.
Then again, no one is really overplaying their hand here, not even Pete Davidson, who may as well be playing himself in the way he takes being gifted zucchini bread by Bee as a personal offense, or Lee Pace, who buys into the shenanigans without letting age define him in a role he is clearly having way too much fun in. With social commentary as potentially biting as this, it’s only as mean-spirited as the cast is willing to make it. As such, the film is not a condemnation of a generation refusing to live in the moment so much as it is a fly-on-the-wall examination. In fact, Reijn and DeLappe would have us believe they’re actually impressed by their characters’ resolve to move around the house in order to play a game when it’s surely easier to whip out their phones and play Among Us instead, especially since they’ve been afforded that luxury.
Nevertheless, playing the victim is the name of the game within the game in Bodies Bodies Bodies, and it’s what gives the film its true purpose as the search for the murderer culminates with a darkly comical twist. It serves that purpose well in remaining of the moment without having to amount to much. To be fair, if anything is clear by the film’s conclusion, it’s that getting tangled up in pointless matters of privileged frivolity, hiding behind the vanity, and not holding oneself accountable for living life on a screen doesn’t add up to a whole lot, either.
Bodies Bodies Bodies opens with Sophie and Bee driving through the mountains to the mansion home of her childhood friend, David, where he is holding a “hurricane party.” That is to say, he is using the impending storm as an excuse to throw a private, drug-and-alcohol-fueled rager over the course of several days in order to wait things out. Sophie and Bee have only been dating for six weeks and Sophie has already told Bee that she loves her, a feeling she only tentatively reciprocates. Bee is a member of the working class from Eastern Europe, having moved to America to attend college in Utah. As such, she feels intimidated by Sophie’s wealth and the wealth of her friends, but Sophie assures her that they will all love her.
Upon arriving at the mansion, Bee is introduced to Sophie’s friends, which include David, his girlfriend Emma, podcaster Alice, Alice’s much older boyfriend Greg, and Sophie’s ex-girlfriend Jordan. Sophie, on the other hand, is met with unwelcome, awkward surprise, and almost everyone condemns her for ghosting them on their group chat. It’s revealed that Sophie did a stint in rehab and has recently become sober, though her friends don’t view that as much of an excuse for alienating herself from them. Nevertheless, the evening goes on as the rain comes and everyone retreats inside, initiating a long night of loud music, binge-drinking, and drug use. However, everyone remains wary of Max, another of their friends who left the house in a fury the night before in the only car other than Sophie’s and has not returned since.
As the night continues on and tensions continue to gradually rise, Sophie suggests playing Bodies Bodies Bodies, a social deduction game in the vein of Mafia. Sophie explains the rules when Greg voices his lack of understanding: everyone draws a card, one of which has an “X” on it. Whoever draws the X card is declared the “murderer” and, after all the lights have been turned off, must look for everyone as they hide around the house and “kill” them by tapping them on the shoulder. Whenever a “body” is discovered, everyone must cease hiding and come together to determine who the killer is.
During the first round, Greg is discovered lying on the living room floor, but the game is quickly derailed after a strung-out David gets into an argument with both Emma and Greg, which culminates in David insulting Emma to tears and punching Greg. David reveals to the group that Max left the house after declaring his love for Emma, which neither she nor David appreciated.
As the game resumes without David, who steps outside to calm down, or Greg, who goes to bed, Bee heads down to the basement to hide, but instead finds David struggling outside, his throat having been slashed. As David bleeds to death, tension turns to panic as the girls fear for their lives while bickering over who may have killed David. The group attempts to flee the estate in Sophie’s car, but are unable to when the car won’t start. Bee reveals that she left the light on in the car when the two first arrived.
The group pegs Max and Greg as the prime suspects since Max could very well have returned to the mansion without them knowing and since they know the least about Greg, with Alice admitting she has learned very little about him in the few weeks they have been together. Their suspicions toward Greg are exacerbated after they discover weapons and a map to the mansion in his suitcase. Confronting Greg in the mansion’s gym, where he had been sleeping, they inform him of David’s death and accuse him of murder. He adamantly denies any wrongdoing before becoming hostile, stealing one of the kitchen knives the girls had grabbed prior to entering the gym.
In the ensuing struggle, Bee bludgeons Greg to death with a kettlebell weight, an act she claims was out of self-defense. Alice is incensed, though the remaining members of the group attempt to corroborate Greg’s guilt by pointing out that his previously mentioned military background would give him access to weapons. Alice then corrects the misunderstanding, clarifying that when she mentioned that he was a “vet,” she meant he was a veterinarian’s assistant. Therefore, Greg is actually the most innocent of all of them.
The group continues their search for the killer, eventually separating. During their individual searches, Sophie runs into a delirious Emma, who kisses her, much to Sophie’s confusion. Later, as Alice searches the downstairs, she trips near the back staircase and discovers she has landed on top of Emma, who has died after apparently falling down the stairs. When the group convenes on Emma’s body, Jordan and Alice accuse Bee of pushing Emma and cast suspicion on her, with Jordan revealing that she did a search on Bee’s university and could not find her name on the graduate record. The two force Bee out of the house and into the storm, with Sophie doing nothing to defend her.
Bee makes her way back to Sophie’s car, where she finds a pair of underwear that she deduces as Jordan’s, having determined it matches a bra she found in Jordan’s suitcase earlier in the evening. As she makes her way back to the house, she looks through a window to find Jordan stealing a gun from David’s father’s office. Entering through the doggy door, Bee confronts the group and reveals that she only went to college for a year before dropping out to take care of her mother, who suffers from a borderline personality disorder.
Her confession leads to confessions from the others. Jordan tells Sophie that she resents her for her drug addiction before revealing to Bee that the two of them had sex not long before traveling down to David’s for the party. Sophie, in turn, criticizes Jordan for being controlling before revealing to Alice that Jordan “hate-listens” to her podcast. After Alice insults Jordan’s family for their lower financial standing, Jordan takes out the gun and shoots Alice in the leg. A struggle for the gun ensues amongst all four girls, which ends with Alice being fatally shot in the neck.
With Alice dead, Jordan holds Sophie at gunpoint and forces her upstairs, but Bee walks up the back staircase and ambushes Jordan, throwing her over the banister and onto an empty pile of glass liquor bottles. As Jordan dies, she tells Bee to check Sophie’s texts before erratically firing more gunshots at the two of them. As Sophie and Bee attempt to hide and ride out for the remainder of the night, Bee questions Sophie about cheating on her, which Sophie repeatedly denies.
When the morning comes and the storm has blown over, Bee makes her way to the backyard and is soon followed by Sophie. Sophie tearfully confesses to Bee that she has relapsed and gave Emma the drugs that caused her to black out and fall down the stairs, making her indirectly responsible for Emma’s death. However, Bee shrugs this news off and reveals that she has stolen Jordan’s gun, holding Sophie at gunpoint as she demands to see her texts.
Sophie throws her phone into the yard and the two struggle for it, with Bee pushing Sophie into David’s pool to have an edge. When Bee picks up Sophie’s phone, the two realize that it is actually David’s phone. Upon opening up the screen, the two find a TikTok David had made prior to his death, revealing that David accidentally slashed his own throat while attempting to slice open a bottle of champagne with a machete, which he had seen Greg do earlier in the evening.
As Bee and Sophie begin to process that there was no murderer, after all, Max (Conner O’Malley) returns to the house as the power comes back on. Upon noticing David’s body in the yard, Max asks the two what happened, but Bee and Sophie are left speechless as they realize the bloodshed was all for nothing.
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