- Directed by Halina Reijn
- Written by Sarah DeLappe, Kristen Roupenian
- Stars Amandla Stenberg, Maria Bakalova, Rachel Sennott, Pete Davidson, Lee Pace
- Run Time: 1 Hour, 34 Minutes
- Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cTzGKsZjBOY
Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone
It’s a little different take on the trope of a group of people trapped together and getting slowly killed off. The acting is good, with characters that are well-developed. You don’t like a lot of them, but that’s part of the fun. Overall this one is a winner.
Synopsis
Two girls, Bee and Sophia, are making out in the woods. Sophia says, “I love you,” but Bee remains silent. Credits roll.
They drive up to the big automatic gate and can’t get their car window open. They drive up to the huge house in the woods. They’re meeting David, Jordan, Emma, Alice, and Greg there. Sophia and Bee have come for the hurricane party. This is David’s dad’s house. Suddenly, it starts to rain.
Bee feels out of place with these people; she’s not from the same class as the other rich kids. She regularly calls her mother for status updates. Sophia is just recently out of rehab. Someone says Greg was in Afghanistan or something, and he’s way older than all the others. David is a spoiled rich guy.
They all play a game called “Bodies bodies bodies,” where one of the group plays a murderer. If you’re the murderer, you have to “kill” someone by touching them on the back. Then they have to figure out who did it. First, they play a game where they all hit each other. Hard.
They turn out the lights and play their game in the dark. They soon find Greg face down on the floor; he’s the body. Before long, Greg and David are really getting on each other’s nerves. They’re clearly not having a lot of fun with this game, but at least could start hitting each other again.
The hurricane picks up, and all the lights go out for real this time. Bee goes to the restroom and finds David outside, mortally wounded. It looks like his throat has been cut. As the girls panic, he dies quickly. All five of them run to the car for help, but nobody has keys. They all go back to the house. Jordan finds a machete out in the mud; that’s what Greg used to open a champagne bottle last night and now it’s covered in blood.
They all gang up on Alice– how much does she know about Greg, anyway? Greg’s supposed to be asleep upstairs, and he’s the only one who is not accounted for. Emma’s gone too. They go to Greg’s room, and he’s not there, but he’s got all kinds of survival stuff in his suitcase. There’s lots of talk about Max, who was there last night and left before all this started. Max had punched David in the face.
They eventually find Greg sleeping in the gym with a relaxation mask on. He was wearing headphones and hadn’t heard anything until now. He thinks they’re still playing a game and chases them. Greg’s confused about what’s a game and what really happened. He’s slow on the uptake. Things quickly spiral out of control. Until Bee hits him over the head with a dumbbell and kills him. Alice still swears that Greg didn’t do it. Alice says he wasn’t a military veteran; he was a veterinarian’s assistant.
The girls start infighting, and feelings that simmered below the surface start coming out. Everyone then wanders around in the dark for a while. Before long, Alice trips over Emma’s body. They all turn on Bee, who was conveniently close to all the deaths. They literally throw her outside into the hurricane. She ends up coming back in through a doggy door and sees Jordan pick up a gun.
Bee comes in and accuses Jordan. We get the truth about Bee, and it’s pretty mundane. Jordan pulls out the gun that she swore she didn’t have. Sophie’s also got truth issues on top of her previous drug problems. Alice and Jordan go at it as well until Jordan shoots Alice in the leg. They all wrestle– on top of the gun, and then it goes off again– finishing the job on Alice. There’s more wrestling over the gun until Jordan gets thrown over the balcony and lands on a bunch of glass bottles. Bee runs from Sophia; she’s afraid of her.
When the sun comes up, Bee walks through the house and checks all the bodies. Bee pulls out the gun and tells Sophia she wants to check the texts on her phone. Alice had been accusing Sophia of cheating with Jordan. They wrestle over the phone and fall into the pool. Turns out that’s not her phone!
They see on the phone who really killed David.
Max shows up. “What happened?”
Commentary
Those cell phones all have mighty good batteries. I liked the way they used FaceID at the end with David. We still never really find out if Sophia was cheating.
Each character has a lot of personality, and they all act appropriately. They’re all terrible people, and they all get what’s coming to them. Only Greg was murdered; the rest was the group’s own paranoia and incompetence.
The end makes it all worthwhile. Perfect!