Totally Killer Review

It's almost Halloween, which means it's time for all the streaming services to drop some low-rent horror film unceremoniously. This week sees Amazon Prime releasing "Totally Killer," a slasher-comedy that also happens to be an 80's set time-travel movie. It's a lot of leftover ideas from other films, but it's mercifully better than the app's last year horror-comedy, and also 80's set, "My Best Friend's Exorcism."

"Totally Killer" isn't bad but it's more amusing than clever, and boy does it want to be clever. The time-travelling narrative immediately complicates the plot, as it has to work around the butterfly effect, but it cops out when teenage Lauren (Troy Leigh-Anne Johnson), as opposed to adult Lauren (Kimberly Huie), says that there are multiple time-travel theories. I mean, she's right, since it doesn't exist (or does it?), but come on man! If the film was really good it wouldn't matter. That, or it'd have an actual answer.

Anyway, the plot: Jamie (Kiernan Shipka) is your average present-day teenager who's mom Pam (Julie Bowen) is killed, thirty five years or so after her friends were killed by the "Sweet Sixteen Killer." Why the name? Because of the killer stabs their victims, you guessed it, sixteen times. Also like your average teenager, her best friend Amelia (Kelcey Mawema) has invented a time machine for the school's science fair, as one does.

Jamie's blasted back in time, to the night of the first of her mother's friends' murders, and that's about all you need to know. There's plenty of the obligatory scenes where Jamie comments on how insensitive and irrational the 80's were, yet she and everyone else keeps calling the killer "he" without knowing for sure. I'm not suggesting the killer's gender, nor will I get into gender politics, but it seems like a needless assumption that stands out for a film as self-righteous as this.

Because at the end of the day, this "is" a slasher, so there's plenty of horny teenage sex, or at least insinuation of handy-panky. I imagine it's to titillate actual teenage viewers, but is a non-teenager adult supposed to be aroused? Isn't that, gross? And since this takes place decades past, doesn't that mean those actual teenage viewers are watching people their parent's age "doing it?"

It probably doesn't matter, but hey, I thought it was a good question.

I won't go into much of the actual plot, since the murderer's, or murderers', is unknown, but you can expect all the same stupid moments like when, in a particularly frustrating and frequently repeated moment, the heroes don't unmask the masked assailant, but it's fine. At least "Totally Killer" doesn't masquerade as intelligent filmmaking the way "Scream VI" did.

Though, the more I think about it, Jamie here should have decades of horror cliches to help her solve the case, but alas, just another example of the film critic being smarter than the filmmakers.