Totally Killer
MA15+, 106 minutes, Prime Video
3 stars
In recent years we've been treated to some great offshoots of the slasher comedy genre.
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Happy Death Day and Happy Death Day 2 U played with the time loop premise to great effect, while Freaky treated us to some body swap laughs.
Now we've got time travel in Totally Killer, and the good times continue.
From Always Be My Maybe director Nahnatchka Khan, the film follows 16-year-old Jamie Hughes (a spirited Kiernan Shipka, The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina), who unwittingly travels almost 40 years into the past and lands smack bang in the middle of her small town's notorious 'Sweet 16' serial killing spree.
The first act introduces us to Jamie in her own timeline, 2023, approaching Halloween night.
Every year people in her town of West Vernon dress up as the Sweet 16 Killer, who wore the mask of a blonde man with one dangling earring as he murdered three popular 16-year-old girls from the local high school.
Each victim was stabbed 16 times, and the killer was never found. The case has been an enduring mystery ever since, and has left Jamie's mum Pam (Modern Family's Julie Bowen) fearful that something terrible would happen to her only child.
Jamie, being a typical teen, finds her mother's overprotectiveness incredibly grating and rebels against her. But when the killer strikes again after being dormant for decades, she realises her mother was right to be worried.
Through typically vague movie logic, Jamie ends up transported back to 1987 through her best friend's science-fair time machine contraption, and is determined to use her knowledge of the original murders to stop the killer in his tracks.
But what would a time travel movie be without the protagonist bumping into people from their own life - Jamie, of course, meets her mum as a bitchy, "mean girl" teen (played in this timeline by a pitch-perfect Olivia Holt, Cruel Summer) and her dad Blake (Charlie Gillespie, Julie and the Phantoms) as a dopey jock.
She finds her best friend's mum Lauren (Troy Leigh-Anne Johnson) and shares that she's from the future and needs help stopping the murders, something Back to the Future fan Lauren is more than happy to do - even confiding that one doesn't think about time travel without considering the possibility that someone from the future might just ask you for help one day.
But to everyone else in town, she's Jamie LaFleur, exchange student from Prince Edward Island, Canada. The running Canadian gag is surprisingly enjoyable, leading to this gem of a line from Randall Park's police chief Dennis Lim: "I don't know what you troublemakers get up to in Canada, but down here we don't tolerate shenanigans."
Apart from enjoyable slasher moments (in a spoiler to no one, Jamie doesn't manage to stop all the murders), the film is filled with moments lambasting 80s "cool culture" as being very problematic by 2023 standards.
Jamie schools her parents and their classmates on everything from homophobia to racism, bullying, environmentalism and consent - but not in a way that feels like a lecture for the audience. It's more a case of "look how far we've come".
As with any time travel movie, there are plot points that don't make a lot of sense if you think about them for too long - something Totally Killer does not shy away from - but they can be easily forgiven because you're having such a good time watching it.
The costuming and soundtrack are both great 80s throwback fun, as are the frequent references to Back to the Future.
Unlike most slasher comedies, Totally Killer doesn't leave a lot open at the end for a follow-up, but with a starting point like this, a sequel wouldn't be unwelcome.
