Film / Bodies Bodies Bodies

Clockwise from upper left: Emma, David, Greg, Jordan, Alice, Bee. Center: Sophie.

"This is not a safe space."

— Tagline

Bodies, Bodies, Bodies (stylized as BODIES BODIES BODIES) is a 2022 Horror Comedy Slasher Movie directed by Halina Reijn and distributed by A24. The film stars Amandla Stenberg, Maria Bakalova, Pete Davidson, Myha'la Herrold, Lee Pace, Rachel Sennott, and Chase Sui Wonders.

Seven friends hold a party at a remote mansion during a hurricane, during which they play the "murder in the dark"-style game "Bodies Bodies Bodies". As the group fractures and friendships are tested, the group soon comes to suspect that an actual killer is running amok, which forces them to work together to apprehend the murderer — that is, if they don't kill each other first.

A24 initially acquired the film as a spec script in 2018, although it was eventually rewritten and a separate director was originally attached before Reijn was confirmed. The film is said to satirize the social culture of Generation Z through themes of class, privilege, and the influence of social media jargon and progressive politics on youth culture.

After a critically successful premiere at SXSW on March 14, 2022, Bodies Bodies Bodies was released theatrically on August 5 of that year.

Previews: Trailer.

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"I can't believe you're making these tropes about you!"

• Accidental Suicide: David's death turns out to be a case of this all along, in which he attempted to saber a champagne bottle with his Gurkha knife and slit his own throat by mistake.
• Accident, Not Murder: David's death, which overlaps with Accidental Suicide. Sophie also claims that Emma's death was an accident, but we don't see the details to know whether she's telling the truth.
• Acquitted Too Late: Played with. Whenever anybody dies, they're taken out of consideration for having killed David, even though the fact that there's no one killer means they easily could have. As it happens, though, they didn't, because nobody killed David to begin with.
• Affair Hair: A variant. While rummaging through Sophie's bag in the car, Bee discovers panties that match the same pattern to the bra she noticed in Jordan's bedroom earlier. Although it's not explicitly confirmed whether Sophie had sex with Jordan, it's pretty strong evidence.
• Age-Gap Romance: Most of the characters are young adults in their 20s — and then there's Greg, played by 44-year-old Lee Pace. Alice met him on Tinder and describes him as her boyfriend, and David says he is "like 40." The real-life age difference between Pace and Alice's actress Rachel Sennott is 17 years.
• All for Nothing: After the group spends most of the runtime convinced and paranoid that there's a killer among them, leading to the deaths of Greg, Emma, Alice and Jordan, we ultimately find out that David's death — which kickstarted the chaos — was an Accidental Suicide, meaning that there was no outside killer, and all of the bloodshed was their own pointless doing.
• Anyone Can Die: With a title that emphasizes a growing body count, this shouldn't be a surprise. By the end of the movie, Bee, Sophie and Max are the only ones left.
• Barbell Beating: Bee ends up killing Greg by bashing him over the head with a kettle bell. Twice.
• Beauty Is Never Tarnished: Zig-zagged. The handsome Greg's death via kettlebell isn't nearly as messy as it would have been in real life, and the corpse of the good-looking, athletic Jordan is rather picturesque for someone who fell fifty feet onto a pile of broken glass. However, the lovely Emma dies by falling down the stairs, which is decidedly not as neat and tidy as such a death is often portrayed — her face is bloodied and broken, and smears of blood from her head banging on the wall can be seen.
• Beware the Quiet Ones: Bee is awkward and withdrawn, and mostly ignored throughout the movie, but she's responsible for killing both Greg and Jordan.
• Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: Just about all of Sophie's friends. The atmosphere of lively camaraderie at the pool party doesn't last long before it turns into passive-aggressive comments and outright fights.
• Black Comedy: As dark and tense as the movie can get, comedy never entirely goes away. One of the most notable instances is The Reveal that David was the one who slit his own throat by stupidly swinging the Gurkha knife toward himself while trying to saber a bottle of champagne with it.
• Black Dude Dies First: Inverted. Jordan is the last of the group to die, while Sophie survives the night (alongside Bee).
• Blood-Spattered Innocents: While no one in this movie is exactly "innocent," just about everybody ends up spattered with blood.
• Brainless Beauty: Greg is played by the notably good-looking Lee Pace, and fits the standard definition of a "Himbo" to a T.
• Brick Joke: One of the first things Bee does upon arriving at the house is ask for the Wi-Fi password. She ends the film, having survived until morning (when the house's power comes back on), by pointing out to Max that she has Wi-Fi now.
• Butch Lesbian:
  • Downplayed. Calling Bee butch might be a stretch, as she simply dresses more tomboyish compared to her girlfriend, Sophie.
  • Jordan dresses in rather masculine clothes, doesn't shave her armpits, and wears no makeup for the entire film (which even Bee, the other more tomboyish girl in the cast, dons at some point). She also slept with Sophie, or so she claims.
• Cast Full of Rich People: The main friend group (David, Sophie, Jordan, and Alice) are all quite wealthy, with David and Sophie in particular being incredibly rich. The only character who's explicitly said not to have much in the way of money is Bee, though vet tech Greg likely isn't exactly loaded either.
• Caught on Tape: At the end of the movie, Sophie and Bee have no idea how David died. Luckily he either posted or just saved a TikTok video of himself attempting the Gurkha knife trick and slitting his own throat, which would've left him unable to press stop.
• Chekhov's Gag: David's annoyance and clear jealousy at Greg's trick with the Gurkha knife. It comes back with the reveal that that's how he died; he was attempting it and slit his own throat.
• Chekhov's Gun: When Bee and Sophie arrive at the house, we see Bee leave a light on as she exits Sophie's car. Once the main group's night takes a turn for the worse, with the storm hitting, the house's power cut, and David found dead, their attempt to escape in Sophie's car is thwarted because Bee having left that light on drained the car's battery, meaning that they're stuck at the house.
• Closed Circle: The storm hitting the house keeps them indoors, knocks out the phones and cell service, and though they at first try to drive out in Sophie's car, Bee carelessly left a light on inside which led to the battery running out.
• "Could Have Avoided This!" Plot: Upon The Reveal that David's killer was David himself in an Accidental Suicide, it becomes clear that everybody else could have survived if only they'd kept cooler heads instead of pointing fingers.
• Cuddle Bug: Sophie is a very affectionate young woman, constantly hugging and kissing her girlfriend as well as the rest of her friend circle.
• Dead Star Walking: Pete Davidson might be the most recognizable name on the cast list, and he's the first to die.
• Deadly Game: Subverted, despite the title: Bodies Bodies Bodies is played briefly towards the start of the movie, but the deaths have more or less nothing to do with the game, though finding out that Jordan is the in-game killer is the final step towards everyone being convinced she's the killer. It does, however, foreshadow the truly dysfunctional state of the friend group.
• Disney Villain Death: Jordan meets her end by being thrown over the railing of the stairs by Bee.
• The Ditz: Alice is a fairly absentminded person in general, and her histrionic, self-absorbed nature is Played for Laughs more often than not.
• Double-Meaning Title: The title references both the game the group of friends play and the, well, bodies that accumulate throughout the movie.
• Downer Ending: Also overlaps a bit with No Ending. Nobody wins. Virtually all of Sophie's friends are dead, she has relapsed back into her drug addiction, her relationship with Bee is almost certainly over, and there was no killer to be scared of to begin with, insinuating that the group put themselves through hell for next to no reason.
• Dysfunction Junction: As the film goes on, it becomes abundantly clear that all of the members of the friend group have their own issues going on that are exacerbated by the events in the story.
  • Sophie has dealt with drug addiction in the past and her friends had to confront her father to get her into rehab. She later had to drop contact with her friends for a while because their rampant partying triggers her addiction, and by the end of the film she's using again.
  • Bee explains that she is unemployed and lying to Sophie about it to avoid disappointing her, and her mother has BPD, which she had to drop out of college to help deal with.
  • David has an active addiction to coke, is in a deeply toxic relationship with Emma, and is also jealous of Greg for being a cool older guy, and all of this culminates in him stupidly killing himself in the end.
  • Emma herself clearly has huge self-esteem issues and is constantly seeking validation from others, and after Sophie apologizes for their argument, she immediately tries to make out with her because she assumed Sophie liked her romantically, and Sophie derides her for thinking that everyone is in love with her.
  • Jordan's stern and brusque personality seems to stem from her family being less rich than her peers, so she is insecure about it and brings others down as a result, such as hate-listening to Alice's podcast and complaining about Sophie being a burden because of her addiction.
• Everybody Did It: In a manner of speaking. David technically killed himself, admittedly through a freak accident. Bee killed Greg during a moment of mass hysteria from the entire group. Sophie "killed" Emma (accidentally) by doing drugs with her and watching her fall from the balcony, but doing nothing to stop it. Sophie, Alice, Jordan, and Bee are all partially responsible for Alice's death, since they were all fighting over the gun that Jordan brought. Bee killed Jordan by throwing her over the balcony to protect herself and Sophie.
• Fish out of Water: Bee, a working-class, socially awkward young woman, is brought into a mansion full of spoiled rich kids whose conversations are laced with sarcasm and snide jokes. Her gift of zucchini bread is treated with condescension by David.
• Foreshadowing: A few examples.
  • When Greg sabers a champagne bottle with a kukri, David is clearly jealous, and Alice says that she wishes someone got it on video. Later, David tries to film himself doing the same trick for a TikTok, which results in his throat getting slashed.
  • Jordan makes a point of asking for Bee's email when she's about to send the Wi-Fi password to her, and later asks where she went to school. She's using this information to look into if there was anyone with Bee's name who went to that college; as it turns out, there wasn't, although there's a good reason for it.
  • There's a lingering shot of a dog door leading into the house, which is how Bee gets back inside after being cast out into the storm.
  • Early in the film, while explaining the rules of the titular game to Bee, Alice exaggerates "dying" on the carpet. Alice ends up dying on the same carpet in a similar pose and carpet position.
  • When Bee and Sophie arrive at the house, everyone is holding their breath underwater in reclining poses. They all die by the end of the film.
• Genre Mashup: The film mixes a slasher movie, a black comedy, a whodunit murder mystery, and a Gen-Z satire into one.
• The Ghost: Max is one of the group’s friends and left after getting into a fight with David, though he doesn’t physically appear in the film until he returns to the house in the final moments of the movie.
• Gun Struggle: Jordan, Sophie, Alice, and Bee end up fighting over a gun, resulting in Alice getting shot in the neck.
• Idle Rich: The main friend group all come from wealthy families, and none of them seem to have much in the way of "real jobs" (Alice's podcast notwithstanding).
• It's All About Me:
  • Yes, Alice, a tense confrontation where Bee reveals that her mother has borderline personality disorder is the perfect time to talk about your body dysmorphia.
  • All of the friends suffer this to varying degrees, which is the group's collective Fatal Flaw. The movie uses Gen-Z culture to show how petty and shallow all of these characters are by having them comment on social issues, but making it all about how it affects them personally rather than a collective good. All of them are too wrapped up in their own egos to realize that there is no killer, that David's death was an accident, and their self-centered paranoia and petty drama ends up doing most of them in.
• Jerkass Has a Point:
  • Jordan's one of the least sympathetic characters, but she's not exactly wrong when she points out that Sophie hasn't known Bee for very long, and that she may well be a Gold Digger or worse. As sympathetic as Bee is, she's shown to be much less enamored of Sophie than Sophie is of her, so she may have been right.
  • Jordan and Sophie's argument is this from both sides, even if Sophie is more sympathetic; Jordan is right to point out that Sophie cheated on Bee with her as a way to demonstrate that Sophie is Not So Above It All, and she's strongly hinted to be right given Sophie's reluctance to show her texts to Bee. Sophie is also right to call out Jordan for being hateful and unsympathetic, as she hate-listens to Alice's podcast for seemingly no reason than to mock someone whose supposed to be her friend.
  • While Greg is a decent enough guy and turns out to be totally innocent, David and Jordan are not wrong to point out how weird it is for a man in his forties to hang out with a group of people half his age, and how naive Alice is for not having any information about his life beyond his zodiac sign and essentially inviting a total stranger to a party at her friend's house where they'd all be drinking and using drugs. In any other movie, Greg would have been a much more dangerous man.
• Kukris Are Kool: David's family owns what he calls a "Gurkha sword," which Greg uses to saber a bottle of champagne. Later, David accidentally slits his own throat when he tries to do the same for a TikTok.
• Late to the Tragedy: Played for Laughs. It is claimed that an unseen character, Max, stormed out of the party after a nasty fight before the viewpoint characters arrive, and is raised as a possible suspect. Not only did he not have anything to do with anything, he returns right at the end to find the house smashed up and bodies all over the place. Needless to say, he is incredibly taken aback by this.
• Leaning on the Fourth Wall: When David is accused of being the killer in the game of "Bodies Bodies Bodies" the party plays, he scoffs that he's "too obvious" to be the killer — perhaps the movie's way of acknowledging that the high profile of Pete Davidson would make him too obvious to be the killer in this slasher movie. Indeed, he isn't — he's the first victim. But of course, there isn't a slasher at all.
• Logo Joke: The A24 logo is designed with bright neon lights in the trailer, reflecting the glowsticks present at the party.
• Love Confession: Sophie confesses she loves her girlfriend Bee in the first scene, but adds immediately that she doesn't have to say it back. Bee doesn't.
• Minimalist Cast: The only people in the film are the group of friends (Sophie, Jordan, Emma, Alice, and David), the new love interests of two of them (Bee and Greg), and another frequently-mentioned friend of the group (Max) who doesn’t physically appear until the final two minutes of the film.
• Naïve Newcomer: Bee, a working-class young woman from Eastern Europe, is brought along by the wealthy Sophie to a party with her other rich, catty friends.
• Never Trust a Trailer: The trailer edits Alice's "Did you just fucking shoot me?" and Emma's "I can’t believe you’re making this about you!" so that it looks like the latter is responding to the former. In fact, the two clips are unrelated. Emma is dead before Alice gets shot by Jordan.
• No Ending: After Bee and Sophie discover video evidence that David accidentally slit his own throat, the long-absent Max finally comes back, reception comes back after the hurricane... and the movie ends.
• No Sympathy: Sophie's friends make a show of being sympathetic to Sophie's addiction issues and stint in rehab, but hold the fact that she didn't regularly use their group chat against her. As things devolve even further, Jordan viciously tears into Sophie for her struggles, essentially calling her a burden and showing absolutely no sympathy to her plight.
• Passive-Aggressive Kombat: In the early goings of the party, there are a lot of subtle digs thrown around beneath the surface of a lively, friendly get-together. Soon enough, people start to get regular aggressive.
• Penny Among Diamonds: Bee is a poor college dropout from Eastern Europe surrounded by people who range from "upper middle-class" to multi-millionaires.
• Pool Scene: When Bee and Sophie first show up to the mansion, everybody's having a blast by the pool.
• Poor Communication Kills: Much of the deaths, as well as the drama within the friend group in general, are a result of this.
• Preserve Your Gays: While Jordan (who is either gay or bisexual, given that she slept with Sophie) dies, the only two survivors are the gay couple Bee and Sophie.
• Red Herring: There are plenty of these thrown around to suggest that certain characters could have killed the victims. It turns out that there is no one killer: David accidentally killed himself, and the rest of the deaths came about from the squabbling that ensued.
  • Greg has a notably adversarial relationship with David, and is revealed to have brought a bunch of his Army gear, including knives, along to the party, as well as circling the house on a map. Not only did he not do it, he's the next to die. He also wasn't in the Army.
  • Emma's relationship with David is clearly strained, and the two have a pretty significant fight. She didn't do it, either, and is the third to die.
  • The friend Max, who apparently punched David and then left the party, is mentioned several times. He really did leave, and only returns at the end.
  • Sophie, Jordan, and Bee are all suggested as possible killers of Emma, who the audience sees kissing Sophie to her obvious displeasure not long before her death. As it turns out, her death was an accident, although Sophie did accidentally set it into motion.
• The Reveal: A few, with the biggest being at the end, when a video on David's smartphone reveals that he wasn't murdered at all, but accidentally slashed his own throat in a botched attempt to duplicate Greg's sabrage for a TikTok video.
• R-Rated Opening: It's downplayed, but while making out with Bee in the very first scene, Sophie explicitly rubs between her legs (albeit with both of them fully clothed).
• "Shaggy Dog" Story: The end reveals that David accidentally slit his own throat with the knife while drunkenly making a TikTok, meaning that the resulting chaos, paranoia, and deaths were all for naught.
• Skewed Priorities: One of the main themes of the movie is that, even in tense life-or-death situations, the characters are so shallow and self-absorbed that they bicker with each other over petty bullshit. In a particularly memorable example, a nasty argument after the deaths of three people is sidetracked because it turns out Jordan doesn't actually like Alice's podcast.
• Soapbox Sadie: The female friends misuse social justice concepts when arguing. The way the arguments are framed, it's meant to show that they're petty and shallow people.
  • Emma accuses David of gaslighting her while they're playing a game. Said game is based entirely on lying, so David was only doing what he was supposed to do.
  • Sophie complains that no one worries about her white friends' drug use, but they thought she had a problem "just because she's a black woman". It's later mentioned that she overdosed three times, so Sophie's friends were right to be worried about her relapsing.
  • One character calls another a psycho and is scolded for being ableist, while the group is having a fight that is about to turn physical.
• Staircase Tumble: This is how Emma dies, though it is shown to be much more bloodier than most examples of this trope. Sophie claims it was an accident (that she indirectly contributed to), though it’s ambiguous whether she was telling the complete truth.
• Title Drop: "Bodies Bodies Bodies" is a "murder in the dark"-style game they play early on, and the name of it is said both in introduction and as part of the game, as it's meant to be shouted upon the discovery of a "body".
• Token Good Teammate: Sophie is part of a particularly poisonous friend circle, but she's easily the most sympathetic character of the bunch (aside from Bee, who isn't really a member of the group to begin with.) She's genuinely distraught when her best friend dies, and she's a loving girlfriend to Bee, albeit an unfaithful one. Notably, she feels incredibly guilty after she accidentally caused Emma's death.
• Too Dumb to Live: Quite literally. David, probably while drunk and high, tries to saber a champagne bottle with his kukri. This is already stupid, but then he swings the kukri towards himself while doing so. Unsurprisingly, he slits his own throat, which ends up starting the entire murder mystery and causing five deaths throughout the night.
• Twofer Token Minority: Sophie and Jordan, the two black girls in the film, are both queer (everyone else being white).
• Unseen No More: Max, The Ghost who has been both a catalyst for the drama and a Red Herring, appears in the final minutes of the film.
• Uptown Girl: Sophie, a rich girl, is dating working-class Bee. Unusually, Sophie is black and Bee white. Although they stay together and Sophie confesses her love for Bee at the very beginning, the relationship has difficulties. Bee finds it hard to fit in with Sophie's rich friends (some treat her very badly).
• Wrong Genre Savvy:
  • Alice is caught up in the idea that the deaths are related to the game of Bodies Bodies Bodies they were playing, seeming to think that this is a Deadly Game movie along the lines of Truth or Dare (2018). She's quickly shouted down for having faulty evidence (Greg was the first "victim" in Bodies Bodies Bodies, but the second to die in real life), and for still fixating on it after three people have died.
  • More broadly, the main characters think they're in a whodunit Slasher Movie and that one of them is the killer. Bee and Sophia only realize that there was no killer after everybody else was dead, victims of their own paranoia after they turned on each other.

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