- Directed by Nahnatchka Khan
- Written by David Matalon, Sasha Perl-Raver, Jen D’Angelo
- Stars Kiernan Shipka, Olivia Holt, Charlie Gillespie, Lochlyn Munro
- Run Time: 1 Hour, 46 Minutes
- Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KPj_pTEZQI4
Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone
This was a nice mix of fun and grim horror with both humor and a body count. It’s a time-traveling adventure with our heroes dealing with a masked serial killer who seems to exist in both 2023 and 1987. Think “Back to the Future” with horror elements. We thought it was well done and liked it a lot.
Synopsis
It’s Halloween, 2023. Thirty-five years ago, three girls were found butchered on their 16th birthdays. The “Sweet Sixteen Killer” then vanished. The murderer wore a mask that is still considered iconic in the small town where it happened.
We cut to Jamie, a teenager who argues with her mother, Pam, about their tastes in music. Her mother went to school with the murdered girls, and she’s a bit overprotective, especially since Jamie’s about to turn 16. Jamie meets up with her friend Amelia.
The killer attacks Jamie’s mom, who’s been preparing for this moment for decades, and it’s an intense battle. Still, she loses badly. Credits roll.
So the killer is back. The school coach gives all the teens some ridiculously easy self-defense tips. The police question Amelia about her father. It seems mother Pam and Chris, the murder podcast guy, might have been having an affair.
The school is having a science fair in the nearby closed-down creepy amusement park. Amelia is making a time machine for the science fair. It doesn’t work, probably because there’s not enough wifi signal. Amelia has the date set for the first of the Sweet Sixteen killings; she wants to prevent all the murders.
Jamie’s father, Blake, explains that Pam wasn’t having an affair; she was working with Chris to find the killer. Chris asks Jamie about a note that her mother got back in the day.
That night, the killer chases Jamie through the amusement park. She hides in the non-working time machine, but then the killer “stabs” the machine in the control panel, and… it works!
It’s now 1987, and the trashy old park is now thriving and packed with people. Jamie gets a ride to school, and everything is tacky and borderline sexist and racist. There’s no security anywhere. She enrolls in school and soon finds the three “dead girls” in her gym class. She then gets involved in deathmatch dodgeball. Worse yet, her mother is the school bully.
Jamie goes to the police, but they don’t believe her story. She compares her life to “Back to the Future,” but the cops haven’t seen it yet. She goes to talk to Amelia’s mother, Lauren, who’s still in high school. She’s seen “Back to the Future,” and more importantly, she’s already given a time machine a lot of thought. Lauren goes with Jamie to check out the broken time machine.
Back in the real present, Jamie’s father confronts Chris at the amusement park, where the police are checking out Jamie’s disappearance. Amelia tells them all about the time machine, but of course, no one believes her.
Jamie teams up with Lauren and the young version of her school’s principal to get into the party where the murders originally happened. She sees a hunky guy and is shocked to find out he’s her dad. Jamie tries to stay with the murdered girls, but they all really hate Jamie cause she’s weird and they’re “mean girls.”
Jamie listens to Chris’s podcast on her phone for details about the original murders, but her battery’s running down. The killer approaches Tiffany, who was historically the first victim. She gets it in this timeline, too, just not in the right place. Jamie and young Pam find the body.
When the police question Jamie, Pam sticks up for her. Jamie tells her that she’s psychic and knew about the murder beforehand. Marisa is going to be the next victim. Pam’s got a whole list of people who might hate their mean-girl friend group. The police go after Eddie, the school “rock star,” but the girls know it wasn’t him.
In the present, Chris tells Amelia that he’s misremembered where Tiffany died. The story “feels” different now. They spot Jamie in one of the photos from back in the day, so they know what happened.
It’s Marisa’s 16th birthday, and Jamie suggests skipping the party and going to a condo instead. Jamie meets “Lurch,” a weird, violent guy whose sister died last year in a car accident. The group ends up at an isolated murder-cabin in the woods, which is exactly where she’s supposed to die. All the girls get super high, and they have no idea what’s going on when Jamie warns them.
She watches from outside as the killer stabs Heather instead. Nothing is the way it’s supposed to be as all the teens gang up on the killer. Blake gets non-fatally stabbed, Pam gets beaten up, and the killer gets away.
Jamie gets a sample of the killer’s blood, but the police have never heard of DNA testing. Since Marisa’s alive and Heather isn’t, she has no idea how things are supposed to play out. Jamie notices that her cell phone has wifi when the TV satellite truck is working. Still, that battery is getting lower, and if it runs out, she’ll be trapped in 1987.
Jamie checks out Lurch’s van and finds… nothing. Lurch and the young principal talk about Tiffany’s party. Heather was supposed to be killed tonight at the amusement park Halloween party, but Jamie doesn’t know what’s going to happen. She enlists some of the teens to stop him.
In the present, Chris remembers more changes, and he tells Amelia about the changes in the sequence of death.
Marisa goes into the haunted house attraction as bait while her friends hide with weapons. The killer follows her. The group gets the drop on the killer, and they kill him. They take off the mask, and it’s Doug, the “future” Principal. He has a locket with a picture of “Fat Trish,” the girl who died last year. It comes out that the three girls basically caused Trish’s death, and it was about revenge.
Suddenly, another masked killer jumps out of nowhere and kills Marisa. No, that’s not possible, is it? Yes, it is. He runs off and kills Chris’s father on the way, who is a reporter, live during a broadcast and right in front of young Chris.
Back in the present, Amelia is unconscious, and her new version of the time machine is missing. Back in the past, Jamie gets into the new time machine built into a spinning thrill ride, but the killer jumps in– along with Pam. They double-team him, but the centrifugal force of the ride makes that a challenge. Pam gets ejected, and we see that it’s Chris, the podcast guy. He just wanted to continue the story so he’d have more to talk about. Plus, he’s hateful and angry and got to kill his dad in 1987, which he considers a bonus.
That 1987 nail gun gets really useful, and Chris dies explosively. Jamie uses the time machine to go home. What’s different now?
Jamie runs home, and her mom Pam is there, just fine. Lauren and Amelia are fine, too. Lauren says that she’s waited 35 years to see who was going to come out of that ride. Jamie’s got a brother now who’s 34 years old named Jamie because her meddling got her parents together at a younger age than before, and Jamie’s name is now actually Collette. Lauren made a notebook that explains what happened to all the characters in the new timeline.
Commentary
It’s got a lot of commentary on how the 80s compares to today. Smoking in cars, sexy gym shorts, “bad touching,” lack of school security, waterbeds, no political correctness, and lots more. Who knew the 80s were so… barbaric?
It’s a time travel story, so it’s all a little convoluted, but it’s easy to follow and makes sense for the most part. The movie already compares itself to “Back to the Future,” so if you like that one, you might be into this as well.