Worth Mentioning - This Is Not a Safe Space

We watch several movies a week. Every Friday, we'll talk a little about some of the movies we watched that we felt were Worth Mentioning. 

Cody learns that parties are very dangerous.

TERROR TRAIN (2022)

The bloodshed in the 1980 slasher movie Terror Train took place during a New Year’s Eve costume party on a train, and given the fact that costumes were involved a lot of people remember that movie as being set around Halloween. Released through the Tubi streaming service, the 2022 remake of Terror Train removes any confusion by actually being set during a Halloween costume party – and the switching of holidays is one of the biggest differences between the original film and this remake.

Directed by Philippe Gagnon from a screenplay by Ian Carpenter and Aaron Martin, the new Terror Train is definitely not the sort of remake that sets out to reimagine or reinvent. It tells the exact same story as the original movie, just with characters you’ll be anxious to see get taken out by the slasher and lines of dialogue that might make you cringe. There are also some prominent moments of questionable acting. Thankfully, Carpenter and Martin drop in the occasional surprise so the movie isn’t entirely predictable.

Like the original, this Terror Train begins with college student Alana (Robyn Alomar) being convinced to take part in a prank orchestrated by douchey frat boy Doc (Matias Garrido). She lures dorky pledge Kenny (Noah Parker) into a bedroom, where he finds he has actually climbed into bed with a cadaver left there by Doc. Kenny freaks out, understandably... and while the idea is disgusting, the presentation of this prank isn’t nearly as gross or unnerving as the scene was in the ‘80 film. Jump ahead a while and Alana, Doc, and their friends are attending another party – the aforementioned Halloween costume party – on a train that will take them through some very isolated locations. But there’s a slasher lurking on the train, who gets the killing started even before the train gets rolling. As they slash their way through the partiers, they also trade costumes with a couple of their victims. That was always the best thing about Terror Train, so the makers of this version were wise to keep it in place.

The original film featured actual magician David Copperfield as a magician who performs for the college kids. This time around, the magician is played by an actor, Tim Rozon – a downgrade from David Copperfield, but Rozon still manages to make the magician one of the most interesting parts of the remake. Especially when he expresses disgust with the entitled kids he’s performing for, making himself a suspect in the murders.

I have never been a big Terror Train fan to begin with, and this remake is a lesser version of the concept across the board. But if you want to spend 90 minutes watching a slasher, it’s entertaining enough. This isn’t the sort of remake that will leave you crying “They ruined it!” It’s just harmlessly bland.

BODIES BODIES BODIES (2022)

A lot of genre fans have a strong appreciation for the production and distribution company A24, so it was exciting to hear that the company was going to be releasing what was described as a slasher movie – albeit one that was also said to be a culturally relevant character study with “heightened sensitivity to character development and social dynamics in a subversive way”. But if you watch Bodies Bodies Bodies expecting a slasher movie, you’re going to be sorely disappointed, if not downright irritated. What director Halina Reijn has actually delivered, with the help of writers Kristen Roupenian and Sarah DeLappe (Chloe Okuno, Joshua Sharp, and Aaron Jackson also did touch-up work on the script along the way), is a film that’s best taken as a satire of certain modern day twenty-somethings.

The story centers on a group of vapid friends – Sophie (Amandla Stenberg), Bee (Maria Bakalova), Alice (Rachel Sennott), Emma (Chase Sui Wonders), Jordan (Myha'la Herrold), David (Pete Davidson), and Alice’s substantially older Tinder date Greg (Lee Pace) – who have gathered together at David’s family mansion to party their way through the impending hurricane. The rain starts as soon as they all share their first drink and the weather gets worse from there. What also gets much worse is the situation inside the house. The group decides to play the murder mystery game Bodies Bodies Bodies... and then one of them turns up dead with their throat slashed. Partiers continue dropping one-by-one, and the ones that are still alive can’t be sure who can be trusted. Who is doing the killing?

Chances are that most viewers will find the characters in this movie to be insufferable, but I think that was the goal. They are not good people, and they don’t treat each other well. The characters may be trash, but the actors do a great job of bringing them to life on the screen. I thought Sennott was especially entertaining and amusing in her performance as Alice. You might not ever want to spend time anywhere near these people, but they seem real. Too real. With this bunch of idiots dropped into a house with copious amounts of drugs and alcohol at hand, the events that play out seemed very likely, if not inevitable. 

Bodies Bodies Bodies is not a slasher, despite the fact that multiple bodies drop. But as a blood-drenched satire, it’s a good dark comedy.