Murderin' The Mollys: Totally Killer (2023)

Totally Killer (2023)

Rating: ***1/2

Starring: Kiernan Shipka, Olivia Holt, Charlie Gillespie

So we have time loops ala Groundhog Day (1993) get stabby with Happy Death Day (2017), body swapping ala Freaky Friday (1976) go bloody with Freaky (2020) and Christmastime existential dramedy ala It's a Wonderful Life (1946) hack' n slashin' a massacre with It's A Wonderful Knife (2023). Following this trend of slasherfying pre-existing intellectual properties, Totally Killer  (2023) joins the party with a terror time travel tale that's one part Scream (1996), one part Back To The Future (1985), and maybe a bit of Mean Girls (2004) thrown in there.

The suburban town of Vernon is one with a dark past; 35 years ago, three high school girls were murdered by an unknown assailant, stabbing them sixteen times on their sixteenth birthdays. The madman was never caught, the crime is unsolved after all these years and the victims happen to be the friends of one local mother named Pam (Julie Bowen), who basically raised her daughter Jamie (Kiernan Shipka) armed to the teeth in safety gear so she wouldn't meet a similar fate. The angsty seventeener, however, has grown irritable over her mom's anxious overprotectiveness and opted to see a concert one Halloween night, leaving Pam alone to fend for herself when someone dressed as the "Sweet Sixteen Killer" crashes in and murders her.

Shocked, sorrowful and very regretful for dismissing her mother's fears, Jamie investigates the murder with the help of the town's crime podcaster Chris (Jonathan Potts), who reveals to her a note left by the killer to Pam back in 1987, promising they would return one day to finish the job for good. Also helping her through the grief is her bestfriend Amelia, a super genius whose science fair project is an old photobooth-turned-time machine (!) which she warmly suggests possibly using to travel back in the past and stop the Sweet Sixteen Killer, just for that small chance for Jamie's mom to survive and live on. Fortunately for these girls, they get to see it work! Unfortunately, though, it happened after the Sweet Sixteen Killer swoops in to mangle the heart-to-heart moment, accidentally stabbing the machine which apparently triggers it. 

Caught in the resulting time warp and flung back to 1987, on the eve of the first murder, Jamie navigates through the 80s culture crash in a race against time to stop the victims-to-be from dying at the knife-wielding hands of a psycho, but this is rather a problematic mission when she discovers that her mother is the leader of a bullying clique, who are more or less prone to ticking all the right boxes of being the walking, talking, dying slasher victim stereotypes of drunken beef heads and bitchy prima donnas. 

Interestingly (and probably the film's most creative element), whatever changes Jamie causes in the past in her attempts to stop the murders are felt and noticed by characters in the present, much to some confusion. It's this film's little jab on a popular observed phenomenon known as the Mandela Effect, wherein a group of people collectively misremember facts or events in a consistent manner, and clever details like this is what keeps Totally Killer (2023)'s take on a time travel story fresh and watchable enough to be entertaining. On top of that, this film's approach on its comedy, something I can best describe as a cluster of 'fish-out-of-water via time misplacement' jokes meet low key meta-humor, occasionally lands a good laugh whenever the writing delivers a right amount of snark and smarts, something Kiernan Shipka's crotchety, impassive performance as our teen time traveler help make most of it work. There are occasions, though, where the funnies can get disappointingly predictable on moments that it veers into the usual time travel jabs of generational clash and culture shock. 

Totally Killer (2023)'s comedy-leaning direction also meant that the slasher goods often feel lacking in grandeur. Sure, it is brutal and bloody, and we do get a couple of great murder set-pieces that end with a shocking death or a ironically funny pay off, but there's hardly any variety to the kills and I just couldn't fully get into the villain's design which, perhaps, may have look cool and creepy on concept with the whole snazzy wear juxtaposed by their ghoulish, exaggerated grinning mask, but the resulting product simply looks too clean cut to be intimidating. Still, there's a neat twist to the identity of the killer that I honestly didn't see coming, paired with motives that's one end dreadful, another end silly yet in tune with the movie's overall tone, so it's not an absolute loss.

Production quality is pretty decent, capturing its retro 80s vibe quite nicely with a bopping soundtrack and stylized set work. It has a couple of loose wires and wear as a scifi horror comedy, but what do you expect from a movie where two generations of high schoolers are smart enough to create a working time machine out of a photo booth? (I mean, that kid should be in NASA or something!) Totally Killer (2023) is, for its worth, totally fine so long as you don't take it too seriously! 

Bodycount:

1 female stabbed to death with a hunting knife

1 female stabbed to death with a hunting knife

1 female stabbed to death with a hunting knife

1 male ran through with a scythe

1 female had her throat cut with a hunting knife

1 male stabbed in the head with a hunting knife

1 male disintegrated

Total: 7