16 year old Jamie is unwittingly sent back to 1987 from 2023 by way of a photo booth time machine made for a science fair and tries to stop a serial killer with a 35 year legacy from starting his murder spree. That’s the stuff of peak ’80s sci-fi hijinks right there. Fluffy on the science, coupled with all the fun and splash of a good teen slasher, Totally Killer wants to read as Scream meets Back to the Future (the latter of which they will mention ad nauseum), and they kinda do get away with it.
Now I will be upfront with you. I do not like comedies. Or to be more specific, comedies that come out of the U.S. And that includes the entire body of Totally Killer director Nahnatchka Khan’s work. (Yes, shock-horror, I kind of don’t like Fresh Off the Boat. But wait, wait, wait, hear me out! I understand the appeal, I understand the conceits, so I can, will, and do tolerate the best bits in small doses.) So perhaps fortunately for me, and unfortunately for you, Khan’s duties for this endevour is solely a directorial one.
The short review of Totally Killer is, if you like FOtB and Don’t Trust the B**** from Apartment 23 then this teen slasher time-traveling comedy is right up your alley. It’s great! It’s slick, smart, incredibly self-aware and does do new things for the genre of which Khan is very proud of.
We Don’t Need Roads
Fish out of water stories can be kind of cringey. I get that a lot of you enjoy this type of comedy of manners, but in this case, Jaime’s willful ignorance of social conventions and attitudes of the ’80s seems like it might be trying to speak to the cluelessness of the current generation, or their blind follower wokeness that doesn’t know where its causes came from. (With the average age of the writers and director coming up to 40, this seems plausible, as that’s something that I’m constantly complaining about as well.)
Having lived through the 80’s myself, I find it hard to determine whether we are supposed to sympathise with Shipka’s woke Millennial Jamie or the un-PC ’80s, which may be a purposeful ambiguity on Khan’s part. From interviews, she seems very proud of the movie’s dig at the era’s social conventions, but unfortunately these do not come through in viewing. It takes a lot to walk that fine line between absurdity, commentary, and righteous outrage. (see: James Acaster) And so, the movie comes off as either trying too hard or not trying hard enough.
Which is not to say that Totally Killer is a bad movie. Because it’s not. When the movie stops trying to make fun of how unwoke the ’80s was, and once the movie (and Jamie) embraces that it cannot use 2023 conventions to solve its murders, it’s great!
What’s Your Favorite Scary Movie?
Not every movie needs to be some big social commentary. And that’s okay. I don’t think anyone is watching a teen slasher looking for a sermon on the status quo. Teen slashers as a genre are supposed to be turn-off-your-brain fun romps with suspense and scares, where many modern day interpretations challenge the damsel in distress trope with their heroines fighting back and kicking ass. (Looking at you Jamie Lee Curtis and Halloween Ends.) Totally Killers does this in spades.
Being set in the ’80s with mystery and sci-fi undertones, Totally Killer will undoubtedly draw mild comparisons to the Netflix juggernaut, Stranger Things. Where the Duffer Brothers fully employed ’80s cinematics to fully immerse us in the era, Khan is unburdened with such compulsions and chose to take the easy route of making this a slick modern TV movie. Which works really well for its central conceit of Zoomer-stuck-in-the-late-’80s.
In its own way, Totally Killer is a nostalgia bomb. It isn’t intertextual as Stranger Things, and I do appreciate that restraint. It would be so easy to fill the show with all the usual standbys, but the movie gives us just enough to hold us in that time as to let us focus on the story.
Totally Killer is a thoroughly enjoyable ride, once it gets out of its own way. Kiernan Shipka’s performance as Jamie is solid, and the rest of the cast ham it up at the appropriate moments, making this a light-hearted mashup that actually delivers on its promise.
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