Totally Killer, directed by Nahnatchaka Khan, takes us to the town of Vernon, where an infamous killer, who people believed had become dormant, decided to make a comeback and wreak havoc on the lives of the people. A teenage girl finds herself amidst a murder mystery, and things take a bizarre turn when she gets to know that she could go back in time and alter her reality. So let’s find out what happens in the film, how the protagonist is able to time travel, and if, in the end, the identity and motive of the Killer are revealed.
Spoiler Alert
How Was Jamie Able To Go In The Past?
The folklore of the Sweet 16 killer had been kept alive by a man named Chris Dubasage, who had a podcast that focused on the three killings that happened in the small town of Vernon back in the day. Tiffany Clark, Marisa Swan, and Heather Hernandez were the names of the three girls who were killed in 1987 by the masked Killer, and it was probably a coincidence that all of them were very close to Pam, Jamie’s mother. On Halloween night, after 35 years, the Sweet 16 killer decided to come back and wreak havoc on the residents of Vernon.
The Killer broke into Pam’s house when no one was there, stabbed her 16 times, and made her meet her fateful end. Because the modus operandi of the crime was similar to the triple murders of 1987, people assumed that it was the Sweet 16 killer and for some reason, he was back. Jamie met Chris Dubasage because she wanted to know more about this masked Killer. That’s when Chris revealed to Jamie the note that the Killer had left for Pam, in which he had told her that she would be his next target. Jamie didn’t know why he had not killed her for the past 35 years, and what had changed to make him come back. Jamie’s best friend Amelia was trying to build a time machine, though it was still a work in progress and not operational till now. That machine was kept in the photo booth located in the Halloween carnival area, a place that the school management was using for its own purposes now.
After having a conversation with Chris, Jamie was passing through that area and thinking about how she could have gone back in time and changed the events so that the Killer wouldn’t have been able to kill her mother in the present timeline. But she knew that she could not do anything about it now. Jamie met Amelia near the Halloween carnival arena, and she was asking her to help her catch the Killer when, out of nowhere, the dreaded masked man came and pounced on her. Jamie ran to save her life, and she entered Amelia’s stall, where the time machine was kept. Jamie pressed all the buttons in a state of panic, but nothing happened. But then the Killer drew his knife and tried to stab Jamie, but the weapon got stuck in the conductor of the time machine, and magic happened. Jamie was transported back to 1987, and it took her a few moments to gulp in that fact and realize what had happened.
What Happened When Jamie Changed The Past?
Jamie’s main aim was to quickly become friends with the girls, i.e., Tiffany, Marisa, Heather, and her own mother, Pam, and then try to save them from getting murdered. But it was not such an easy task to befriend them, as they were the snootiest girls of the lot. Jamie started noticing that her existence in the past was distorting the events and changing the reality of the people living in 1987. Tiffany’s body had been found in the garage of her house originally, but when Jamie went there, there was another couple present, and there was no sign of Tiffany. It was at that moment in Totally Killer that she realized that events were getting altered.
Meanwhile, in the present timeline, Amelia figured out that their reality was also changing because of what Jamie was doing in the past. There were photos that Chris had taken of various college get-togethers that had happened in 1987, and now he could see that in all of them, Jamie was also present, which didn’t make any sense to him. But then Amelia made him understand that he was experiencing something called the Mandela Effect, which, she said, was a psychological phenomenon where people remembered things that didn’t happen. Amelia told him that, generally, it happened with an individual because some event from his past life had been altered. Amelia was smart enough to figure out that her friend Jamie was stuck in the past, and she was trying to communicate with her by leaving some clues. What’s shown in the film is vertical time travel, which means that any act done by a person who has time-traveled to the past or the future will have an impact on all timelines. So, if Jamie changed something in the past, then the reality of the people in her current timeline also changed.
Who Was The Sweet 16 Killer?
After trying to save the lives of the three girls who had been killed in 1987 and failing twice, Jamie realized two things: that things were happening differently now as she had distorted the past, and the second bitter realization was that she probably wouldn’t be able to save the girls. In the haunted house attraction, Jamie came to know that the original Sweet 16 killer was Doug Summers, a batchmate of the three victims and the principal of her school in the present timeline. He had murdered Tiffany, Heather, and Marisa because they had bullied his girlfriend, Trish. They used to body shame her, and one day, under the pretext of hanging out with her, they had called her home, got her drunk and bullied her and goaded her into accepting that she was having an affair with one of the school coaches. After that harrowing experience, Trish left their house in an inebriated state, and she crashed her car and died on the spot. But then, after Jamie killed Doug Summers, another man, who seemed like a bigger and older version of Doug, came there and killed Marisa.
Meanwhile, Amelia’s mother, Lauren, had figured out a way for Jamie to go back in time via the quantum drop swing. The second killer also came aboard, and that’s when Jamie got to know that it was none other than Chris Dubasage. Chris was the one who had killed Pam, only so that the people didn’t lose interest in his podcast, and he could keep reporting on the Sweet 16 killer. That note, which he had said that the Killer had given to Pam back in the day, was entirely made up, and he just wanted the conspiracies and the theories to never die. Chris had gotten to know that Amelia had a time machine, and when it was ready to use, he killed the poor girl and went back in time to make sure that Jamie didn’t stop the murders from happening because he was scared that if she did, then his podcast would cease to exist in the present timeline.
Chris never liked his father, and that is why when he went back in 1987, he killed two birds with one stone and stabbed him while he was reporting from that area. But Jamie didn’t let Chris be successful in his endeavors, and she killed him inside the quantum drop itself. At the end of Totally Killer, Jamie came back to her home unharmed, and she was grateful for the fact that she still had her parents in her life. Obviously, a lot of things had changed due to her altering the past, like having an older brother named Jamie and her name being Colette, but all this didn’t matter to her now as her mother was standing in front of her and she knew that she didn’t need anything apart from that.
