Hurricane parties are rarely good ideas.
Oh, if the party involves, say, celebrating the University of Miami football team (whose nickname is “the Hurricanes”) or saluting a notable British World War II fighter plane (ditto), perhaps that’d be just fine. But throw a party in an actual hurricane? Yeah, the most sensible choice might be to simply send your regrets and move on with your life.
A hurricane didn’t stop Bee, though. I’m sure she knew the risks of the storm in which she and her girlfriend, Sophie, were planning to party. But to please her squeeze, Bee was willing to risk it.
After all, Bee was also being taken to meet Sophie’s dearest and richest friends. The invite felt like, well, a relational step to something serious, something lasting. And Sophie assured Bee that her old pals weren’t nearly as “nihilistic as they look.”
Still, can someone be just slightly nihilistic? Bee must wonder as she walks through the mansion’s front door and sees the massive foyer table festooned with a bar’s worth of bottles, and an FBI evidence locker’s worth of drugs.
Also a bit jarring: Apparently none of Sophie’s dearest friends knew she was coming. And when she walks through the door, they seem just about as thrilled to see her as cows are to see Ronald McDonald.
But feathers are superficially smoothed, and soon the pontoon of partiers are quaffing vodka, snorting cocaine and dancing with one-another’s partners with verve.
And then Sophie asks if they’re all up for a game of Bodies Bodies Bodies.
The game is simple, novices are told: Everyone takes a makeshift card. One of those cards has an X on it, marking its holder as the game’s “killer.” The lights are turned off. Partygoers skulk about in the dark until they feel a tap on their shoulder—marking them as the murderer’s first victim. The victim drops dead. The survivors theorize who might’ve done it—accusing one of their number. If they’re right, the game’s over: The “killer” is caught. If they’re wrong … well, the game goes on.
But what happens when the “victims” stop just playing dead? What happens when they are actually dead dead?
The power’s out. The phones won’t work. The SUV won’t start. And the blood won’t stop.
Yes sir. At some hurricane parties, hurricanes can be the least of your problems.
Before it becomes impractical, Bee calls her mother a time or two. And it’s always good for children to keep in contact with their mothers.
After the first dead body turns up, suspicion quickly turns to the group’s other relative newcomer: Greg, boyfriend of fledgling podcaster Alice. When Alice’s friends start asking Alice about how much she actually knows about this guy—how she knows that Greg couldn’t be the murderer—Alice says, “He’s a Libra moon, and that says a lot!”
Bodies Bodies Bodies opens with two of those bodies—Bee and Sophie—making out. The camera lingers on the couple for several minutes as the two women sloppily kiss, and finally departs only after Sophie grabs Bee’s crotch.
The two kiss and make out elsewhere, as well. But at the party, it seems as though another woman—Jordan—also has designs on Bee. We see the two dance flirtatiously. (In fact, that dance seems to be the trigger for Sophie suggesting they play the game.)
Jordan’s the only one at the party without a partner. Alice and Greg form one couple, and we see the two make out as well. David (the party’s host) has a long-term girlfriend in Emma, whom we first meet clad in a string bikini. Emma’s not the only one in swimwear. Most of the other revelers don swimsuits, too. Underwear is held and, in one case, sniffed. A guy playing dead is revived after someone else rubs his crotch with a bottle of booze.
We learn that Max—a departed member of the party—admitted (under the influence, presumably, of various substances) that he was “in love” with Emma (leading to an altercation with David the next day.) Emma also smooches another woman during the festivities, much to the other woman’s shock.
[Spoiler warning] Though Sophie professes her love for Bee—the two have been going out for a whole six weeks, after all—Jordan tells Bee that Sophie actually called her and “begged” her to have sex just a day before she and Bee arrived at the party. When Sophie denies it, Jordan tells Bee to look at Sophie’s texts for proof.
As you might imagine, the bodies do pile up in Bodies Bodies Bodies.
Someone dies from a vicious and bloody sword blow to the head/shoulder/torso area. Another body is discovered in a pile at the bottom of a stairway, face horrifically torn and disfigured from the apparent fall. Someone else careens off a balcony, smashing scores of liquor bottles and ultimately expiring on the shards of glass. One victim is beaned in the noggin by a heavy athletic weight. Another is shot—twice. (We see both wounds.)
Several characters physically fight with one another, often over control of a firearm. Several also brandish various bladed instruments, from knives to swords to meat cleavers. David bears a black eye from when the now-departed Max apparently slugged him.
People smash bottles and figurines. A sword is used to open a bottle of champagne. Someone totes weapons and bits of survival gear to the party.
We hear at least 140 f-words—and perhaps twice as many if you count up the times the profanity’s used in the background musical tracks—and about 13 s-words. We also hear plenty of other profanities, including “a–,” “b–ch,” “b–tard” and “h—.” God’s name is abused around 25 times, and Jesus’ name is abused about five. Sophie calls herself a “raging dyke.”
Even though Sophie’s friends are notorious substance abusers, Sophie and Bee both go to the party with the apparent desire to stay reasonably sober.
Sophie has special reason to do so: She recently came out of rehab—a stint that her friends pretty much pushed her in. Why they singled her out for “needing help” when so many others are just as abusive is a puzzle (as Sophie later notes), but we do hear a couple of stories about her past drug use.
She falls off the wagon hard here, though: We see her snort cocaine. Plenty of others do as well, and a few talk about how “coked up” they are. (Their drug use exacerbates the already perilous situation they’re all in, given that cocaine makes them all overreact.) Most everyone drinks wildly to excess, too. One character is given some mysterious pills, which she runs off to take.
Bee would seem to be the least impaired person at the party for much of it. But she, too, drinks and (accidentally) consumes some marijuana-laced treats. People drink champagne and shots.
Let’s be honest: Most of the folks we see here can be real jerks. We learn that many of these friends regularly talk behind each other’s backs. David’s own hostility can be far more open, insulting the intelligence of his own longtime girlfriend.
They’re also extraordinarily (if superficially) progressive, and that might rub many a viewer the wrong way. For instance, any association with guns or the military is viewed as the darkest of dark marks.
Bee vomits all over her shirt. We hear a story about how Sophie urinated on a subway while under the influence of cocaine.
Bodies Bodies Bodies has problems, problems, problems.
Admittedly, the film is clever, funny and, in a certain way, insightful. You could argue that Bodies Bodies Bodies comes with a set of secret morals, serving as much a cautionary tale as anything.
The characters we see here range from dislikable to utterly loathsome—illustrations of what too much money, too many drugs and too little responsibility can do to a pampered 20-something. When one of them dies on a pile of smashed liquor bottles, it’s an on-the-nose statement of the film’s moral take: Don’t drink to excess. Don’t snort cocaine. Don’t be a jerk. Don’t throw hurricane parties. And certainly don’t do all of them at once.
But I’d lobby for another “don’t,” too: Don’t see this movie.
If Bodies Bodies Bodies is a cautionary tale, it’s still full of all the stuff that it, and/or we, would caution against. The sex. The gore. The drugs. The alcohol. The curses. The absolute jerkery. While these hurricane-party participants were apparently looking forward to this weekend of debauchery, I’d not care to spend one nanosecond in that mansion. And spending time virtually there, via a movie screen, is hardly more appealing.
At one juncture, Sophie tells Jordan that “feelings are facts.” “No, they aren’t,” Jordan snaps back. “Facts are facts.”
But feelings and facts, of course, aren’t always mutually exclusive. For instance: Fact is, this movie has a lot of content issues. And I have a feeling this is one you might want to skip.
Paul Asay has been part of the Plugged In staff since 2007, watching and reviewing roughly 15 quintillion movies and television shows. He’s written for a number of other publications, too, including Time, The Washington Post and Christianity Today. The author of several books, Paul loves to find spirituality in unexpected places, including popular entertainment, and he loves all things superhero. His vices include James Bond films, Mountain Dew and terrible B-grade movies. He’s married, has two children and a neurotic dog, runs marathons on occasion and hopes to someday own his own tuxedo. Feel free to follow him on Twitter @AsayPaul.
