Totally Killer 4K 2023 2160p HDR WEB

Like any idyllic little town from a horror movie, Vernon is not without an iconic tragedy: 35 years ago in late October, three high school girls were stabbed 48 times (16 each with the anthem sweet sixteen). On Halloween, the gruesome tragedy is remembered by the killer mask salesmen and Pam (Julie Bowen), a surviving friend who now keeps teenage daughter Jamie (Kiernan Shipka) uneasy with a mixture of anxiety and hyper-parenting. As it turns out, for good reason: instead of carols, the mother comes face-to-face with the killer, echoing her friends' fates. A few days later, thanks to a science fair exhibit and the inquisitive mind of a classmate (Kelsey Mawema), Jamie travels back to the time when it all began - 1987 - and tries to save the schoolgirls from the massacre.

Totally Killer 4K Review
The most thankless, but for some reason in demand, occupation is to prophesy the demise of genres: every now and then there is talk that the days of the western or romantic comedy are numbered. Among others, the closest to death (both literally and figuratively) is the slasher - every ten years, youth tapes "counting bodies" die and rise from the ashes, more and more often in a love marriage with comedy. The metagames that "Scream" legitimized have become the constant wand of genre renovations: "You Must Be a Killer" hid a twist in the title, "Happy Death Day" offered a Groundhog Day circle survival, and "The Game" was a body-swapping circus. Blumhouse Studios' recipe for success: another familiar trope is added to the contraption with teenage degeneracy. For Nahnatchka Khan's "Totally Killer," it was a time-traveling Marty McFly script.

Like any small, idyllic horror movie town, Vernon is not without an iconic tragedy: 35 years ago in late October, three high school girls were stabbed 48 times (16 each with the anthemic sweet sixteen). On Halloween, the gruesome tragedy is remembered by the killer mask salesmen and Pam (Julie Bowen), a surviving friend who now keeps teenage daughter Jamie (Kiernan Shipka) uneasy with a mixture of anxiety and hyper-parenting. As it turns out, for good reason: instead of carols, the mother comes face-to-face with the killer, echoing her friends' fates. A few days later, thanks to a science fair exhibit and the inquisitive mind of a classmate (Kelsey Mawema), Jamie travels back to the time when it all began - 1987 - and tries to save the schoolgirls from the massacre.

"Totally Killer" - something like a constructor-transformer, while watching the film is convenient to disassemble into parts: each gear is recognizable, but turns out to be in its place, no matter how you turn it. Conventionally, the movie is divided into two poles of attraction: in one, Jamie and her classmate's gifted mother (Troy Lee-Anne Johnson) must fix a photo booth that serves as a time machine to get the girl home in the right year. In another, Jamie leads a detective investigation trying to figure out an intruder and, more complicated, save three young ladies from being stabbed.

In showstoppers, in places spectacular, in places predictable, the director organizes a fascinating and unobtrusive tour of the monolithic monuments of the genre. It's "Halloween," the opening scene inherits the first "Scream," as do the nods to the garage door, the showdown in the cabin in the woods is, of course, "Friday the 13th," the carnage on the rides is "Deadly Fun," and "I Know What You Did Last Summer" acts as the ultimate law of friendship. But the self-indulgent recounting of classics doesn't get tiresome, but rather serves as an excuse to look at the generation raised on (and within) these movies.

A truly entertaining meta-exercise is Jamie's attempts to deal with the mores and habits of high school students of the 80's: minimum of logic and reason, maximum of alcohol and courage. All rash decisions, for which it is customary to scold the heroes of favorite horror films, turn from a genre convention into unbridled stubbornness and outrageous (or is it admirable?) arrogance. Jamie repeatedly accuses his new classmates of being narrow-minded and insensitive, tries to talk to everyone and talk through their traumas and experiences, and, at the same time, object to unethical T-shirt inscriptions. The main preserve of pop-cultural nostalgia, the '80s, looks less like a charming lamp shelter than an era rather crude and one-dimensional in its display of empathy. As McFly once got fingered by bullies in the '50s, Jamie gets slapped around time and time again by both the minus five victims and his own mom (Olivia Holt), who wasn't the nicest girl in class.

The central line of "Totally Killer" is reminiscent of "Last Girls," another metaposture to the genre where a teenage girl (Taissa Farmiga) was able to meet her dead mom by being inside a slasher movie. Nahnatchka Khan's film is sentimental to a measure, more often than not funny, hardly scary, but dynamic and memorable, and most importantly, harmonious in all its sparkling variety. The indefatigable locomotive of the action is Kiernan Shipka, who energizes the frame with pulsating energy. The actress, who once starred in Oz Perkins' "February" and rose to fame with "The Adventures of Sabrina," fits perfectly into the trope of the twenty-first-century final girl: a gloomy, tired, and appealing young lady who absolutely no one listens to.

"Totally Killer" hardly claims the laurels of a genre revolutionary, but it's a worthy reminder that the dead don't die, and as long as teenagers exist, someone will always have to live to see the dawn. Okay, if only in the movies.