With Halloween at the end of this month, films that have creepy, horror elements are in demand. These two know how to provide the chills, while dishing out disturbing social commentary.
Bodies Bodies Bodies (Video on Demand, Amazon Prime) - Films about the twenty-something’s of today and their preoccupation with social media are a dime a dozen. What is rare is to find it done well, and transposed to a genre such as is the case with this film. In this instance, it’s the slasher/horror genre and what happens all takes place in a secluded mansion-like home of one of the characters. David (Pete Davidson) has invited a close-knit group of friends to a ‘hurricane party’; and that sets the stage for this social comedy that takes on drinking, drugs, dancing for social media posting, and playing the murder in the dark-style game from which we get the film’s title. And it’s when an actual death takes place, that the game takes on much darker dimensions.
The film opens with a rich girl Sophie (Amanda Stenberg) taking her new friend and lover, East European Bee (Maria Bakalova of Borat) to this hurricane party. There, we’ll meet David with his actress girlfriend Emma (Chase Sui Wonders), along with Alice (Rachel Sennott, who played the lead in Shiva Baby), Jordan (Myha’la Herrold), and odd man out Greg (Lee Pace). It’s with the game of Bodies Bodies Bodies that we soon discover just how fragile friendship can be, exacerbated by the discovery of very dead, slashed David. In the snap of a finger, cans of worms are opened, backstabbing becomes the sport of the day, and more dead bodies begin to pile up. It’s this blend of comedy and horror that makes this such a indie favorite, when one is in the right mood. The effective ensemble acting also helps.
The Innocents (Video on Demand) - This little masterpiece from Norway would qualify as one of the more disturbing horror/fantasy films you could watch from this year’s crop of unheralded, but given the critics’ two thumbs up, films. Set in a regular, most ordinary of housing estates, what makes this film especially chilling is that the four main characters are all eleven years old or younger. Between the three girls and the one boy, you could easily be deceived into thinking this film is about regular children who are slowly understanding about good and evil, and about choices they can make in their lives, even at such a tender age. That they possess supernatural powers may put you in mind of X-Men: First Class or The Umbrella Academy, but this one plays it very differently.
It’s played differently in the sense that the four children never escape the confines of the housing estate setting. But that doesn’t stop this film from being outright creepy, and filled with scenes that dare us to keep our eyes open - I failed several times. How children can be so mean to each other, how they slyly turn to cruelty when they know adult eyes aren’t watching, and how ultimately, the concept of conscience is a crap shoot, and we can’t insist it’s universal or develops with all children - these are just some of the themes taken up in this film. And then, there’s the acting of the children in this film. It’s so natural and convincing, you’ll swear they must be veterans, belying their ages. Look out for this film and see if you don’t agree with me.