It was really only a matter of time before the painfully targeted marketing of Bodies Bodies Bodies got to me. That, and just one or two passing entreaties from contemporaries who were wise enough to see it early in the cycle and thus hopefully detached from most critical assessments. It is definitely a movie that benefits from going in without any preconceived notions/opinions, a piece of my own advice which I was thoroughly guilty of eschewing. For the sake of the (anticipated, hopefully) brevity of this review, it’s also to the benefit of this movie that it doesn’t take a whole lot of exegesis. The short version is that a bunch of kids [roughly] my age (+1 notably Millennial exception, we’ll get to that later) gather ahead of a hurricane to get wasted and make TikToks, and things go swiftly awry when, one by one, they start to drop dead. A Xanax-and-daddy’s-mansion-inflected whodunnit, Bodies attempts to capture lightning in a kombucha bottle by appealing to virtually every Gen Z joke in the public lexicon. At times hilarious, at more times P-cringe fam, it definitely leaves me waiting for a better take on the subject because don’t get me wrong, there’s plenty of material there to work with.

Let’s start with the easy one. I don’t really get Pete Davidson’s whole “thing.” He’s somehow managed to elevate his celebrity from stand-up and SNL comedian to “being a guy,” which paradoxically works and also leaves me completely nonplussed. I think there’s been a tendency in recent (and granted, anecdotal) memory to give favor to outside actors who are either coming from lateral or completely unrelated professions. I’m thinking films like Uncut Gems, Tangerine, Florida Project, and the like. I think that tendency has produced some extraordinary results, but Pete Davidson for me is not in that category. His brand of rich, privileged kid in a bathrobe who’s incredibly threatened by Lee Pace’s good looks somehow reads as too easy. Or something. I can’t quite put my finger on it, but the role is something that should, and in a way does play to Pete Davidson’s strengths both comedically and spiritually. But I just don’t like it…? It serves as the first example, being very present in the movie’s trailers, of Bodies’ interminable insistence on feeding us anti-commentary masquerading as commentary masquerading as anti-commentary. In a way, Pete Davidson’s acting/character is a microcosm of what I find so annoying about this movie. It seems like it’s trying so hard to do something, but can’t decide what direction to push or pull in. Bodies wants to be a satire, but also wants to laugh with its subjects, but it doesn’t lean enough into either to be convincing. As a result, it winds up as a colorful, somewhat sexy, but ultimately vacuous wink at as many audiences as it can corral. The sad thing is that, in a way, this actually helps it accomplish what is perhaps its most accurate social critique of Gen Z (whether intentionally or not I’m not sure), which is that everything is so cloaked in a blanket of irony that any criticism can be shrugged off with a sort of intellectual detachment. All the jokes at the expense of an abstracted “Zoomer sensibility,” if you will, are so blatantly on the nose that they offer neither an opinion nor an accurate portrayal. They act more as meta-memes, without the nuance of an argument but with all the taxonomy of trying to start one. Again, this applies not just to individual sequences or jokes in the movie, but to the movie as a whole. It clearly wants to say something, but like your favorite comedian, keeps things just ironic and joke-y enough to escape a real conversation.

If there is an example of explicit critique in Bodies, it’s probably Rachel Sennott’s Alice, who basically acts as a simulacrum of everything you might’ve read about this generation in a politically moderate publication. Verbally insufferable and starting her own podcast, she spews jargon and laughable half- and quarter-opinions reminiscent of Gen Z hospital (but, mercifully, probably with the help of some real Gen Z consultants). She lurks in the background, ready to offer a word of tremulous support to whichever side seems more likely to win in the moment. The first to say “I told you so” when it’s revealed that she was right about who killed who. In other words, she subsumes every neutral and negative archetypal Zoomer behavior into a character that is essentially selfish, narcissistic, avoidant, and petty (among other things). It could be that I’m taking this personally, but to me it just seems, to a degree, lazy. Because even Alice is a vehicle for comedic relief. Bodies is too self-aware to make her character anything more than a foil for words-of-the-day, and so there’s nothing meaningful to grasp onto other than the superficial hilarity of her portrayal. The orgiastic climax of this phenomenon that I’ve been harping on now for almost a whole page is what I call the “Gen Z Hate Minute,” wherein the surviving characters all scream at one another with as many distinctly 2020s hot buttons as they can muster, culminating in another impotent commentary on our supposed inability to argue over anything not steeped in uniquely frivolous and trifling Gen Z concerns (e.g. which of these characters’ parents are richest or whatever).

It may seem at this point like I hated Bodies, but truly I did not. While I thought the thematic content was mostly toothless in a very special way, there was one especially redeeming piece that was just perfect: Lee Pace’s Greg. The most beautifully crafted character by a long shot and, perhaps not coincidentally, one with some of the fewest lines of dialogue. From his affable frat boy sword-champagne trick to his light therapy sleep mask, he immaculately captures a delightful new trope as the ”adorably clueless Millennial”. As the notably older boyfriend on the trip, he’s in the enviable position of being totally oblivious to if and how successful he is at ingratiating himself to his younger hosts. Posing in selfies and TikToks with no pretensions, earnestly packing a bug-out kit in the event that the hurricane somehow takes down a ten-room mansion, and innocently working out in the home gym before taking a self-care nap on the basketball court, he is simply the best set piece on this gnarly board. His bewildered but good-natured reaction to the kids’ accusing him of murder is a beautiful crescendo — he reads it as part of the bizarre game he didn’t really understand in the first place, and is disarmed with the singularly charming kind of confusion that grows in the gaps between generations. It’s not until too late that he reads the seriousness of the room (again, magnificent), and is promptly killed. Not only is he the best character from scratch, but he is also Bodies’ most coherent satire, capturing what he’s meant to represent with equal parts subtlety and humor. RIP Greg, you were the best of them. 

To close out, I’m now reflecting on how funny I did find parts of Bodies, as I was definitely laughing for a fair amount of its runtime. But, I’m not willing to give it the defense of “just being a comedy,” and judge it on that merit alone. The fact is that this movie, whether admittedly or not, is trying to say something. Sadly, with the exception of Greg, there’s not enough commitment to say anything meaningful in any direction. By hiding under that blanket of irony and self-awareness, it’s effectively refusing to say anything, and I’d rather someone try to say everything than nothing.

Some of the most Gen Z Hospital moments:

• “Have you seen SVU? It’s evidence.”
  – When deciding what to do with Pete Davidson’s body (I think).
  
• “He’s a Libra moon. That says a lot.”
  – When Alice is asked about Greg’s integrity (Again, I think).
  
• “David’s dad is a dick but his politics check out”
  – When someone asks if there are any guns in the house.
  
• “Don’t call her a psychopath that’s so ableist”
  – I can’t remember, I think someone talking about Emma?
  
• “I understand and I’m an ally and I…” *mumbles and trails off*
  – Alice, when asked a relatively pointed question
  
• “Your parents teach at a university”
  “It’s public”
  – I don’t know, some argument about who’s more privileged or something
  
• “You want a Xanax?”
  – how original

Some other stray observations and opinions:

• I truly did not recognize Maria Bakalova for the entirety of the film, and credit her immensely for her range. If I hadn’t seen Borat Subsequent Moviefilm, there’s no way someone could convince me they were the same actress.
• Jordan wheezing “check her texts” as her last words after getting thrown over the stairs was pretty damn funny.
• The scene where Sophie and Bee roll in the mud and then fall in the pool was quite beautiful.
• The big reveal *spoiler* of Pete Davidson’s fatal TikTok attempt was by far his best part in the movie, and completely hilarious.
• Conner O’Malley’s cameo was hands-down my favorite scene. I wish he would get more work.