There are echoes of Happy Death Day, Back to the Future and The Final Girls in Amazon’s perky Halloween offering Totally Killer, echoes often loud enough to drown out the film entirely. Its time-travel slasher plot cribs elements from all and relies on enthusiasm over invention to keep us entertained, a gamble that only works in brief bursts. It works best when it’s not funneling all of its energy into a smug wink, self-aware name checks only serving to prove that the film’s three writers have a base level of cine-literacy and want us to know that they’re in on the joke.
As a comedy horror with a heavy emphasis on the comedy, it could have done with more jokes of its own, never quite nailing a notoriously difficult combination of genres, a laboured mention of Scream only reminding us of its lofty superiority. Like that film, it’s the story of a high school preyed upon by a masked maniac, whose 1980s killing spree curses a sleepy small town with a cloud it’s never really been able to crawl away from. Mad Men and Sabrina’s Kiernan Shipka stars as Jamie, a teen struggling with an overprotective mother whose helicoptering comes from a legitimate place: she was the only survivor from her group of friends at the time. When the killer returns, Jamie is transported back to the 80s and comes face-to-face with her teenage mother, determined to stop the killings before they happen.
Shipka’s progressive gen Zer is aghast at the retrograde politics of the time and some of the script’s best moments come from exploring this culture clash. I’d argue there could have been a handful more as they serve to distinguish Totally Killer from its many inspirations, the film too often settling into an overly familiar groove. Its derivative nature isn’t helped by Nahnatchka Khan’s bland, point-and-shoot direction, every scene lit like a daytime soap, a frustration for a comedy but a disaster for a horror. There’s no sense of an atmosphere, no suspense or menace to any of the kills and no fun to be had with any of the period recreation, a visual lift that could have helped a script sorely in need of it. There will likely be way worse films to come this Halloween season, but none will look quite as bad as this.
Unlike 2015’s surprisingly affecting comedy The Final Girls, which saw a teen transported into a horror movie led by her since-deceased scream queen mother, there’s no emotive pull here or attempt to make anyone or anything really matter. It leaves the last act as a bit of a scramble with some ineffective twists and some hard-to-follow gobbledygook papering over what feels a little too low stakes. Shipka, whose flat affect doesn’t always suit her material, is a mostly engaging heroine and only struggles with one-liners that would be DOA regardless of the actor.
When her energy aligns with those around her (a solid young cast, although Scream VI standout Liana Liberato is brutally underused), there’s some goofy fun to be had here, it’s just a shame there’s not more of it.
Totally Killer is available on Amazon Prime on 6 October
