Bodies Bodies Bodies is a fascinating experiment, an attempt to combine two subgenres – the one-crazy-night comedy and the whodunit mystery – that are fundamentally incompatible. The former is marked by its shaggy looseness, an anything-goes spirit, and heavy improvisation; the latter requires drum-tightness, a discipline and commitment to the murder(s), the gathering of clues, the elimination of suspects. They don’t quite pull it off. But it’s fun to watch them try.
The “them,” in this case, is director Halina Reign and a team of five credited screenwriters – surprising, as the picture does seem formed from a singular sensibility. That sensibility is, first and foremost, unapologetically and unabashedly gay, opening on a tight close-up of some very earnest kissing and cuddling between Bee (Maria Bakalova) and Sophie (Amandia Stenberg). “I love you,” Sopie tells Bee. “You don’t have to say it back. I just… I love you.”
Bee looks nervous, and not for the first time. They’re on their way to the remote, ginormous mansion of Sophie’s childhood pal David (Pete Davidson), where the bulk of their friend crew has gathered – all of them ultra-rich, leaving working-class Bee feeling extremely out of her element. But Sophie is feeling a bit out of place as well, since she just ended a stint in rehab, and her pals are all hard-drinking, hard-partying types. They’re hunkering down to ride out a hurricane – and it’s coming on fast – but their little hurricane party turns into a night of mayhem and murder.
These early scenes are some of the picture’s best. Bakalova is a good entry point, empathetic as she tries to fit in and catch up, and Reign creates an atmosphere that mixes good times and weird vibes – a sense that pieces of shared history are being ignored, that everyone’s resentments and irritation are just barely under the surface. Finally the question is posed: “Who wants to play Bodies Bodies Bodies?” The titular game is a pretend murder-mystery type of thing, with a secret “killer” taking out other guests until the survivors puzzle out their identity, but this group takes it quite seriously (“This game gets very ugly”).
And then it gets very real indeed, with an actual dead body and no way to call for help. The internal logic of what follows mostly checks out – you can see how the situation would keep escalating, and how the survivors would end up turning on each other, sometimes viciously, sometimes lethally. It’s anxiety-inducing, and sometimes funny, and sometimes messy. But the wheels come off the wagon a bit in the home stretch; there’s a sense that the scribes have written themselves into a corner and aren’t sure how to wiggle out of it, so we end up with clumsy gunplay and big shout-y confrontations, and a loss of the gleeful irreverence that makes what comes before so memorable.
The performers help keep it afloat. Everyone is solid, but the standouts are probably Lee Pace as a blissfully Zen, too-old-for-the-room boyfriend (unlike Bee, he’s an outsider who doesn’t mind it) and Rachel Sinott as one of the friends. Her performance here confirms what her leading turn in Shiva, Baby promised – she’s an absolute firecracker, the kind of performer who gets a laugh no matter what she’s saying or doing (“He’s a Libra Moon! That says a lot!”). Bakalova is a bit of a disappointment – not because she’s bad, but because her role relegates her to the straight woman (so to speak), which seems like a real waste of such a magnificent comic presence.
This is actor-turned-director Reign’s sophomore feature, and she’s quite good at setting scenes; the music pulses, the photography is energetic and colorful (the cinematographer is Jasper Wolf), and the visceral quality of the filmmaking helps put the viewer into that mansion, partying alongside these rich kids, observing the unmistakable earmarks of a night careening out of control. If the movie didn’t do the same, this could’ve been an all-timer. 
B-
“Bodies Bodies Bodies” is out Friday in limited release. It opens nationwide on August 12.
