“Bodies Bodies Bodies” is an enjoyably strange film in the sense that its real point is not in its plot or narrative but instead in what its characters try to be. Although the story here revolves around a group of young adult friends in their 20s having a party that turns into a nightmare, the real fun is in the characters, their social anxieties, and the overall understanding of this group of people belonging to a certain social and economic class. Of course, the film remains serious in its presentation throughout, but the satirical black comedy style only gets better as the content becomes grimmer, and by the end, “Bodies Bodies Bodies” is a quirky and enjoyable one.
Spoilers Ahead
‘Bodies Bodies Bodies’ Plot Summary: What Is The Film About?
Two young women, Bee and Sophie, are excited about their new budding love and especially about the weekend they are about to spend with Sophie’s friends. Although Sophie does not want it to be anything like that, to Bee, this party is almost like the moment that would decide whether her girlfriend’s friends accept her or not. The party itself is a rather strange celebration, for the young men and women have decided to gather and spend the evening together while a horrific hurricane rages outside. This “hurricane party”, as they call it, perhaps makes more sense when the rest of the characters are introduced, though. Along with Sophie herself, all her friends belong to extremely rich families and have no need to think of sustaining themselves. Sophie and Bee arrive at the party venue, a sprawling and lavish house owned by the father of one of the friends, David. Along with David, who has been Sophie’s best friend since childhood, there is David’s girlfriend Emma, a friend named Alice, who has also brought her much-older boyfriend Greg, and another friend named Jordan. As Sophie and Bee make their entry, the friends seem surprised to see Sophie there, and they also mention another friend, Max, who had initially joined them the previous day but had left the house for some reason.
As the old friends catch up and start their revelry with drinks and drugs, the hurricane arrives and wreaks havoc outside. Sometime in the evening, they decide to play a game called “bodies bodies bodies,” in which everyone is handed a paper with one of them given the role of a murderer. Once the game starts, the lights will be switched off, and everyone will have to hide while the one assigned murderer will have to touch them to “murder” them. When the body of a “murdered” is found, the name of the game would be shouted out, and then everyone would determine who the murderer is. The first round is played, with Greg turning out to be the murdered, but the scene quickly turns sour as he and David have an argument. While Greg leaves to return to his room and sleep, David has an argument with the women, and he, too, leaves the room. Around this time, there’s a power cut, and the five women are left to figure their way around the house. As Bee wanders around the house, though, she is startled by David suddenly appearing outside the house and banging against the glass doors, but she quickly realizes something is very wrong. She and the four other women find out with great horror that their friend David has been murdered by someone with a sharp knife.
See More: ‘Bodies Bodies Bodies’ Characters, Explained: What Killed David? His Friends or His Ego?
What Bizarre Events Follow The Death Of David?
As the women frightenedly gather to think of who has committed this real murder, all of a sudden, their primary suspects are two: Greg, for having remained in his room even after all this commotion, and Max, who had an argument with David the previous night after he professed his love for David’s girlfriend, Emily. However, the fact that the knife, or kukri, to be particular, with which David had been killed had earlier been used by Greg to show off his skills makes him a certain suspect. The girls go searching for him together and find him not in his room but in the large sports gym area, lying on the ground with his sleep mask and earphones on. When confronted about the murder of David, Greg denies any involvement and is rather spooked to see one of the girls carry a knife. He tries to take control of the situation and snatches the knife away, and even tries to shout out orders to the women, when a nervous Bee strikes him with a dumbbell and kills him. While all of this goes on in the film’s storyline, the real thing of note is the sheer distrust and insecurities that each of the characters has with each other. The men, David and Greg, show typical male egoistic behavior, with David’s being more childish and foolish than Greg’s. David had always been complaining about everything that Greg had been doing, as he admitted that he believed he could do everything better than the older man. This made Greg the prime suspect, but even if he was innocent, his actions, when confronted, turned things around for him. Instead of trying to convince or escape the situation, he tries to take control of the five women, and that’s what backfires.
In the wake of Greg’s killing, though, the girls once again have doubts about whether the man could have been innocent, and in the meantime, a terrible fight breaks out between Sophie and Emily. Sophie had a past history of drug abuse and overdose, for which she had to make David convince her parents to let her go around freely again. During the unusual events of that particular evening, Sophie finds a line of cocaine readied out on a counter in the house (left behind by David and Alice) and snorts it uncontrollably. By the time she has an argument with Emily, Sophie is not really in her right mind. In a rather strange fashion, the women keep trying to protect their respective lovers from slander; Alice does it to protect Greg, and now Emily does it to save Max, saying that just because Max loves her does not mean he would kill her present boyfriend. This enrages Sophie, who claims that Emily never loved David and wishes death on her. Emily is hurt beyond limits as she walks away and is then privately met by Sophie, who now apologizes for her behavior. Marking the heights of miscommunication and misinterpretation, Emily kisses Sophie in response, and when Sophie pulls away confusedly, she says that she thought this was what Sophie wanted and meant by apologizing. Sophie offers her some drugs, which she accepts, and is then found dead at the bottom of a staircase a few minutes later. While the girls had earlier suspected Emily could have been the killer, only because she was an actor by profession and could therefore act innocent, they now fear that the real murderer is still among them.
The rough and tough Jordan, who always seems to keep a no-nonsense air around her, takes dominance over the situation and accuses Bee of being the murderer, while Alice provides support to her. They reveal that Bee’s story of recently graduating does not match up, as her name is nowhere to be found in the official reports, and Jordan drives Bee out of the house. Bee spends some time alone outside before crawling back into the house through the dog door. Before entering, though, she had seen Jordan take a gun from the office of David’s father, and she now confronts her right in front of Sophie and Alice. Bee now also explains why she had lied to Sophie and her friends, as she could not continue with her education because of her mother’s borderline personality disorder. Hearing this, the girls, especially Alice, immediately soften up to her, and when Jordan denies letting Bee go only because of her sad story, Alice talks about the importance of mental health. Her entire speech is totally out of place considering the situation, and she also finds a chance to talk about her own struggles with body dysmorphia. Jordan dismisses this too, but her strong and difficult-to-hurt toughness soon crumbles away as well. Jordan and Alice now have a war of words, in which the latter exclaims how Jordan’s parents were upper-middle-class throughout their lives, instead of how she portrays them to have become rich from serious poverty, and Jordan can take no more. Jordan shoots Alice in the leg, and a scuffle to get hold of the gun follows, in which Alice gets shot in the throat and immediately dies. The plot, which increasingly reminds one of “And Then There Were None,” is left with three women now—Bee, Sophie, and Jordan.
Jordan and Sophie had had a romantic history of their own, as the two had dated earlier when Sophie had her overdose episodes, and this past comes up once more. When Sophie and Jordan blame each other for it being found out that Jordan had been the killer in the “bodies bodies bodies” game, Jordan tells Bee that Sophie had met her that very day and had cheated on Bee with her. Despite the absurdly trying situation that they find themselves in, this allegation becomes the prime concern for the three women. Jordan is ultimately killed by Bee and Sophie, but even before dying, she warns Bee to check Sophie’s phone to find proof of their illicit affair. The two lovers are the only ones left, and Sophie now tries to profess her love to Bee and touch her, but Bee moves away as if struck by terrible fear, and she hides in the house for the entire night. As morning breaks, the two women chance upon each other again, and Bee now pretends to have been looking for Sophie and hugs her. While it had seemed like Bee was afraid of Sophie thinking she was the killer, it turns out that Bee’s bigger fear was that her girlfriend had indeed cheated on her, as she now points a gun at Sophie and orders her to show her phone.
‘Bodies Bodies Bodies’ Ending Explained: Who Was The Real Killer?
As the storm and rain have now stopped, Bee and Sophie have a scuffle in the mud, trying to get hold of Sophie’s phone, and they even fall into the swimming pool in the middle. Once Bee makes her way up again, she finds a phone in the mud and tries to unlock it, only for Sophie to claim that it is not her phone. They realize that the phone belongs to David, and Bee unlocks it using David’s dead face. In it, they find a Tiktok video that David had shot the previous evening, in which he tries to emulate Greg’s skill at opening a champagne bottle with a kukri. In the process, David stupidly cuts his own throat, and his murder turns out to be an accidental suicide. There had indeed been no killer at all, and the group of friends had indeed killed and massacred each other over their own lack of faith in each other.
Despite having a sense of humor that might seem quite crude at its crux, “Bodies Bodies Bodies” actually presents all of it with smooth style and effect. There are moments when the characters seem extremely cringy and obnoxious, but only because the film wants to present them in such a manner. The film also does not shy away from presenting common modern terms and character tropes, and that, too, builds to its effect. In the end, a young man walks into the house compound with a confused look on his face, and he is understood to be Max. With his face still bemused with shock and awe, Max asks what has happened, and at that very moment, the electricity comes back. As Bee’s phone constantly dings with new notification alerts, she seems to get the entire question and the gravity of their situation wrong, as she sheepishly says that her mobile now has reception, and “Bodies Bodies Bodies” cuts to end credits.
“Bodies Bodies Bodies” is a 2022 Drama Thriller film directed by Halina Reijn.
