Pete Davidson – Memphis Flyer

Take a group of people, lock them away in a remote location, and start killing them off one by one.

No, that’s not my plan for the weekend — it’s a time-honored formula for a thriller. Agatha Christie used it as a jumping-off point for some of her most famous and innovative mysteries. Horror films like The Haunting adopted the device, and how could you even make a decent slasher movie without gathering your potential victims at Camp Crystal Lake?

Bodies Bodies Bodies is the latest story to dust off the cozy trope and twist it to satirical ends. It comes in hot, with a close-up of Sophie (Amandla Stenberg) and Bee (Maria Bakalova) kissing passionately. After a tryst in the woods, they drive in Sophie’s aging Land Rover to a secluded mansion. It’s the family home (or at least one of them) of David (Pete Davidson), Sophie’s best friend from childhood.

We meet the rest of the cast in the pool, competing to see who can hold their breath the longest — the first of many edgy games this toxic friend group plays. There’s Emma (Chase Sui Wonders), David’s attractive actress girlfriend; Alice (Rachel Sennott), the cocaine-crazed party girl; Greg (Lee Pace), Alice’s hunky beau; and Jordan (Myha’la Herrold), the no-nonsense overachiever who is the only person in this post-college clique not to come from money.

There’s a hurricane approaching, and the friends have gathered to wait out the storm with copious amounts of booze and drugs to pass the time. They’re surprised to see Sophie, who has lost touch with the group ever since they staged an intervention and sent her to rehab. But she claims to have responded to the group text — the main arena of friendship these days — and has such a deep history with David that he welcomes her. For Bee, it’s the first time she’s seen her new girlfriend in her natural element. She’s surprised to learn that Sophie’s family home is even bigger than this sprawling mansion. But the streak of destruction Sophie’s wild years left behind has alienated her family, and it’s obvious that the point of this trip is her return to the affluent world which exiled her.

As the dynamic between the friends reveals itself, we start to wonder why she would bother. These folks’ idea of a fun drinking game is taking a shot of tequila and then slapping the person next to you — and you’d better do it hard, or you have to go again. David is the passive-aggressive ruler of the roost, and he’s threatened by Greg’s presence. No one quite knows what to make of Bee’s Eastern European accent and proletariat mannerism. Finally, as the storm drives them from poolside, Emma suggests they play a new game: Bodies Bodies Bodies. They draw lots to determine who is the secret murderer and then turn out the lights and scatter. The “murderer” taps a victim on the shoulder, then the rest of the group tries to figure out who is the wolf in sheep’s clothing. At first, David objects to the game because every time they play it, a fight breaks out. “But that’s what makes it fun!” says Emma.

Sure enough, the game quickly goes sour. Greg and David storm off in a huff. As the storm intensifies, Bee sees David clawing at the window. His throat cut, he bleeds out before the groups’ horrified eyes. Paranoia (aided by the cocaine) ensues. Is there a killer in the woods or are they trapped in the house with the murderer?

Based on a story by Kristen Roupenian (who wrote the now-infamous “Cat Person”) and directed by Halina Reijn, Bodies Bodies Bodies shares a premise with Memphis director A.D. Smith’s Covid lockdown thriller Killer. But where Smith played it straight, Reijn twists it into dark comedy. In true slasher fashion, all of these people are horrifying jerks who deserve their bloody comeuppance. Stenberg and Bakalova have excellent chemistry as a new couple who slowly turn on each other, and Sennott (who was great in Shiva Baby) stands out. Davidson’s controlled, nuanced performance hints at talent beyond his smirking SNL presence. The digital noir cinematography by Jasper Wolf is often outstanding. At a crisply paced 95 minutes, Bodies Bodies Bodies is a satisfying cinematic snack.

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One of these days, someone’s going to write a leading role worthy of Taraji P. Henson.

Maybe that seems like an ignorant thing to say about one of the most-seen actresses in America. As Cookie Lyon on Empire, she has become an icon of bold, empowered black womanhood. She’s got the career everybody in the business wants.

But here’s the thing: Henson’s a damn movie star. That’s been obvious ever since Hustle & Flow, where she first teamed up with Empire co-star Terrance Howard and director Craig Brewer, who now writes and directs for the show. Since then, she’s generally been bigger than the roles she’s taken. The possible exception is her role as NASA scientist Katherine Johnson in Hidden Figures, but even that hit film didn’t do either its subjects or its actors justice.

Taraji P. Henson (above) rules the screen in Adam Shankman’s What Men Want.

While I was watching Henson flat murdering every stupid scene of What Men Want, it really drove home to me that the chief skill of a movie star is to get people to relate to them on screen. Maybe it’s even deeper than “relate.” You want to be this person. Their success feels like your success. Their failures sting, and we need to see their defeats redeemed, because it kind of makes up for all the unredeemed failures in our own lives.

If a movie star can deliver that, it’s enough. But Cary Grant, the consummate movie star, not only had a string of flaccid potboilers where he’s the best thing on the screen, he also had Notorious, North by Northwest, and Bringing Up Baby. That’s what Taraji needs: A challenge for her formidable talents.

I admit that I remember very little about the 2000 film What Women Want starring Mel Gibson. This is probably because it is the 2000 film What Women Want starring Mel Gibson. The basic concept is that Mel was shocked by a hair dryer and instead of dying like a decent person he gained female telepathy, which he then uses to succeed in advertising and woo Helen Hunt. In this time of changing expectations, the war between the sexes seems more literal than ever, so gender flipping that idea could work. Perhaps we could achieve understanding between the sexes with a little inter-cranial communication.

Except, I listen to a man’s thoughts all day, and trust me, ladies, you want no part of it.

This is a lesson that Henson, as crackerjack sports agent Ali Davis, learns very quickly. She’s the kind of person who wakes up at 3 a.m. to conduct negotiations while walking a treadmill without even getting short of breath. After she meets a tarot card-reading psychic named Sister, played by neo-soul diva Erykah Badu, and drinks a Haitian herbal tea, she gains the ability to read the thoughts of men. Unfortunately, the firm where she works is populated exclusively by square-jawed, mouth-breathing douche nozzles, and their thoughts are even worse than mine.

The telepath tortured because she can’t turn it off is an old sci-fi trope, and every now and then you can see one of the seven writers who have had a spoon in this stew flirt with actual thought, like when Ali accidentally helps someone kick a cocaine habit, or plays matchmaker between her openly gay assistant Brandon (Josh Brener) and a closeted co-worker (Pete Davidson). But for the most part, Ali is just bombarded by intercepted masculine notions that sound like tweet-sized utterances workshopped from an ’80s sitcom writer’s room: Men be like this, women be like that.

If there’s a guy to take a talent like Henson and build a subversive #MeToo screwball comedy around her, it’s not The Wedding Planner director Adam Shankman. You want to spin comedy gold out of the idea that the little deceptions and deflections of everyday life might just be the basic glue of civilization, and total honesty would be an ongoing disaster? Too bad, here’s a Fiji Water product placement shot and a drunken, wig-snatching wedding brawl. He lingers too long on jokes, and the film has as many endings as Return of the King.

But in the end, I couldn’t bring myself to hate What Men Want. Maybe I’m getting soft. Or maybe, against all odds, Henson just carries the day. In fact, her movie star charisma ends up undermining one of the film’s plot arcs. The lead character is supposed to read as an egotistical jerk who is taught a lesson in humility by their experience. Mel Gibson fits that bill. Henson? I’d pay to watch her read the phone book.