Eventually, it happens to us all. You find yourself in a crowd of people significantly younger than you, who you thought were your friends, and with whom you thought you could inconspicuously hang. Until it dawns on you that no, they are not your friends and never could be. They are different. They interact with each other, and with you, in language and registers that are codified in ways that you cannot understand. They are both more sophisticated and more vapid than you can imagine. And you should be afraid. Very afraid. Also: nobody says “hang” anymore.
This is the scenario in which Beautiful Lee Pace – are we allowed to call him Beautiful Lee Pace? Because it feels the 43-year-old actor-slash-love-child-of-Jake-Gyllenhaal-and-Brad-Pitt deserves an appropriate honorific – finds himself in Halina Reijn’s satirical horror film, based on a short story by Kristen Roupenian (of viral “Cat Person” story fame), which is out in the UK on Friday. Bodies Bodies Bodies centres around a rich kids’ house party gone wrong and stars a smorgasbord of Generation Z’s most bookable actors: Amandla Stenberg (The Hunger Games), Rachel Sennott (Shiva Baby), Myha’la Herrold (Industry), Chase Sui Wonders (Generation), and a couple of Millennials who just sneak in by virtue of being either good actors, like Maria Bakalova, who stole Borat Subsequent Movie Film, or being Pete Davidson, who may be personally possessed of one kind of BDE (having one) but is also good at conveying the other kind (being one). And then there’s Pace, sticking out like a sore, Adonic thumb.
Which is the point of course, because Pace is playing a 40-something interloper called Greg (ah, the inexorable sadness of Gen X first names! Also: part of what makes Succession’s Cousin Greg so hopeless). Greg is the mysterious new boyfriend of Alice (Sennott, whose intonation on her frequent oh-my-gods is pin-sharp) who has brought him to a party at the remote country pad owned by David (Davidson), or rather owned by David’s unseen father, who has taken the unwise decision to leave his Gurkha sword lying around. At first Greg dazzles his young playmates with his knack for opening champagne bottles with said sword, before realising that actually his skills, taking place IRL and not, as Alice notes sadly, having been captured on video, are of no quantifiable value to his audience. And not only that: all those times Greg thought he and his new pals were exchanging parlour-game repartee – the film takes its name from a fictional game they play, essentially a souped-up version of Wink Murder – they were, in fact, “fucking with him”. Or were they? Maybe not! There’s so much irony dripping off Gen-Zers it’s impossible to tell!
Photo Credit: Gwen Capistran
As Bodies Bodies Bodies is a kids-in-a-big-house slasher (albeit of the "lite" variety), it quickly starts going the way these things go. Blood is indeed shed (not loads, if that’s what you’re into), flesh is flashed (not loads either, although that point has already proved somewhat contentious), with some funny and impressively unlaboured skewering of the empty parlance of the current age – gaslighting, triggering, enabling – along the way. It’s not the most biting satire of the privileged and the pretty – hold tight for season 2 of The White Lotus or Ruben Östlund’s Palme d'Or-winning Triangle of Sadness for that – but it nevertheless builds to an of-the-times conclusion that is nifty and satisfying.
Still it’s Greg that we can’t help feeling for. Big, loveable, beautiful Greg, who just wants to impress his new young pals, and lark in the pool with his nubile squeeze, and listen to relaxing music on his ear buds, and wear his LED light mask – that just so happens to look a little bit like Jason’s goaltender mask, hmm – to cure his seasonal affective disorder. Because there’s nothing more tragic than a Gen-Xer who’s out of his depth in a dead, Zed Sea. Although when interpersonal relationships are as shallow as they are now, and our failings so readily and mercilessly exposed – Bodies Bodies Bodies’ main thesis, it ultimately turns out – maybe the deep end is not the worst place to be.
'Bodies Bodies Bodies' is in cinemas from 9 September
Miranda Collinge is the Deputy Editor of Esquire, overseeing editorial commissioning for the brand. With a background in arts and entertainment journalism, she also writes widely herself, on topics ranging from Instagram fish to psychedelic supper clubs, and has written numerous cover profiles for the magazine including Cillian Murphy, Rami Malek and Tom Hardy.
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