'Totally Killer' is a tad rad
Amazon
No matter how self-aware a time travel movie thinks it is, there’s always going to be a moment or two (at least) when a character from the past gawks at something the time traveler brought with them. Call it the “Hot Tub Time Machine” effect, not because that was the first example but because it was so egregious in spending every moment making sure we know we’ve gone back to the ‘80s that it’s tough to remember anything that took place beforehand.
All that is to say that “Totally Killer,” which feels quite a bit like “Scream” before it hops into a time machine to 1987 and looks more like “Deadly Adventureland” (sorta), is both winking and safe, amusing and not entirely unpredictable. You could do a lot worse for your stream of the week, and also are more likely to shrug than dance when it’s over. Decade-appropriate music notwithstanding.
At the center of the bloodshed and time-bending is Jamie (Kiernan Shipka), whose mom Pam (Julie Bowen) is killed in 2023 by the “Sweet Sixteen Killer,” who hadn’t struck since murdering three of Pam’s friends in ‘87. One knife-related technological glitch later (the killer goes after Jamie in a photobooth) and Jamie’s back to her mom’s high school days (teenage Pam is played by Olivia Holt), attempting to stop the killer before he strikes and Jamie explaining her presence by asking if anyone has seen “Back to the Future.” Which, of course, they have.
Director Nahnatchka Khan’s previous movie, 2019’s “Always Be My Maybe,” is a hilarious and surprisingly endearing romantic comedy, the rare example from the genre that delivers everything you want it to. “Totally Killer” isn’t as sharp, as funny, or as memorable, laboring where the previous film soared. But as a diverting, bloody whodunit, “Totally Killer” bests the recent lame “Scream” efforts while keeping you on your toes enough and laughing here and there.
Fun to have Lochlyn Munro of “Riverdale” as Jamie’s dad; a bit less fun that Bowen’s presence in another Halloween-based movie just brings to mind this, though that’s an awfully easy bar to clear when making comparisons. Get “Better Than ‘Hubie Halloween’!” on the poster ASAP.
B-
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