I Watch Films: Totally Killer
Totally Killer
In 1987 three teenage girls were killed on their 16th birthdays, the last on Halloween. This was known as the Sweet Sixteen Killings, the killer having stabbed each 16 times. The killings then stopped and the mystery was never solved. Now in 2023, this is a sort of tourist attraction, with local podcaster Chris Dubasage (the son of a much more successful local news reporter) giving tours.
On Halloween 2023 teenager Jamie Hughes goes to a concert, her mother Pam, a friend of the three who were killed, making her take precautions. Handing out candy at home, Pam is attacked by the killer, and despite having learned self defence, is stabbed to death in the fight. Trying to make sense of this Jamie is approached by Chris who reveals there was a note telling Pam that she’s next. Jamie consoles herself by helping her friend Amelia who is [checks notes] building a time machine in an old photo booth based on her mother’s designs, for the science fair taking place in the old abandoned amusement park.
That night the killer chases Jamie, she flees into the time machine, which works after it’s stabbed with a knife, sending Jamie back to 1987. She decides to try and find the killer, and goes to the high school where she pretends to be an exchange student from Canada which works surprisingly easily (used to the bureaucracy, instant communication and security of the 21st century high school). There she discovers to her surprise that her mother and the three friends are unpleasant bullies. She recruits Lauren (Amelia’s mum) and Doug (in the future the high school principal).
Sneaking into the birthday party Jamie fails to stop the murder and is unable to identify the killer. With the shock and grief she’s able to make friends with Pam and join the group. She tries to divert them from their course, but they end up at the cabin they’re destined to go to. However Jamie is able to protect the girl fated to die, the one due to be killed in two days time is murdered instead.
In the present Chris and Amelia realise the timeline is changing and start work on another time machine (in a fully enclosed video game booth) using new clues that Jamie is leaving in the past. In 1987 Lauren realises the first time machine needs the time and location signal from Jamie’s phone, which is running out of power and can’t connect. They discover it does work when the TV outside broadcast van is broadcasting, and they always broadcast from the amusement park on Halloween, setting up for the final sequence with costumes, killings, statues, multiple killers, and time travel shenanigans.
This is generally funny, Jamie finding the 80s a foreign country, though not totally unfamiliar. Indeed so funny, breezy and light-hearted that the bloody killings are actually almost shocking. I did have a slight moment of confusion when the time machine gets introduced casually at about the fifteen minute mark, having forgotten the premise of the film during the three months between making a note of it and watching it.
Watch This: Time travel 80s comedy slasher film
Don’t Watch This: Bloody, hangs low hanging jokes then grabs
at them
Comments