“Bodies Bodies Bodies”, which is currently available on Netflix in South Korea, a nasty but humorous comedy thriller film which will amuse you in more than one way. On the surface, it looks like your average woman-in-danger flick, but it goes a bit deeper than expected as thoroughly and relentlessly satirizing its main characters’ banal relationships and shallow behaviors, and that is where most of its fun comes from.

The movie opens with a little private moment between two young women named Sophie (Amandla Stenberg) and Bee (Maria Bakalova), and we get to know a bit about them as they are going to a remote spot belonging to the father of one of Sophie’s rich friends. They have been in a romantic relationship for a while despite their apparent social difference, but Sophie is eager to introduce Bee to her friends, and Bee hopes that she will have a good time with others there.

However, things do not look particularly promising because Sophie and Bee turn out to be virtually uninvited when they arrive at a big house located at that remote spot in question. Although her three female friends, Jordan (Myha’la Herrold), Emma (Chase Sui Wonders), and Alice (Rachel Sennott), welcome Sophie and Bee at first, it is clear to us that they do not like their fun time with two guys interrupted by Sophie and Bee’s appearance.

The two guys in question are Greg (Lee Pace) and David (Pete Davidson), who is incidentally the son of the owner of that big house. David later expresses his displeasure during his private conversation with Sophie, and we also come to gather that they and their friends actually do not know anything about Greg, who is much older than them but comes there anywhere just because he recently happens to get involved with Alice via an online dating application.

Anyway, they all expect to have a good time together inside the house while it gets dark and stormy outside due to a hurricane during the evening. While a friend of theirs happens to be absent for some reason, Bee is willing to fill the empty spot instead, and the mood soon become more casual and playful as they are about to play a little murder game called, yes, “Bodies Bodies Bodies”. Somebody among them will take the role of the killer, and, after some dark moment inside house, they will have to guess the identity of the killer once lights are turned on and then the “body” is found.

Of course, the situation subsequently becomes more tense than before when something suddenly occurs to the shock of everyone inside the house. To make matters worse, they also find themselves completely isolated from the outside for no apparent reason, and they become more terrified as it seems that someone among them is going to eliminate them one by one.

This is certainly a classic thriller setup exemplified by Agatha Christie’s chilling mystery thriller novel “And Then There Were None” and many other similar movies ranging from John Carpenter’s “The Thing” (1982) and Quentin Tarantino’s “The Hateful Eight” (2015) to those Friday the 13th movies. As the body count is naturally increased along the story, the movie deftly dials up a sense of dread and paranoia among its main characters, and that is further accentuated by the atmospheric score by Disasterpiece.

In the meantime, the screenplay Sarah DeLappe, which was developed from the story written by Kristen Roupenian, has a naughty fun with how superficial the relationships among the main characters really are. Mostly interacting with each other on the Internet instead of making any genuine human connections among them, they inevitably come to reveal each own deception and hypocrisy under their increasingly perilous circumstance, and the resulting conflicts among them only lead them to a series of unwise things you should not do if you are in a slasher horror film.

As a result, many of the main characters in the film become rather unlikable to us, but the movie keeps holding our attention before eventually arriving at its expectedly ironic finale, and its main cast members are effective as broad but colorful characters. While Maria Bakalova, who has been more well-known thanks to her hilarious Oscar-nominated turn in “Borat Subsequent Moviefilm: Delivery of Prodigious Bribe to American Regime for Make Benefit Once Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan” (2020), dutifully holds the center in a plainer appearance, Amandla Stenberg, who has been more notable since her powerful lead performance in “The Hate U Give” (2018), functions as a good counterpart for Bakalova, and My’hala Herrod, Chase Sui Wonders, and Rachel Sennott are also equally solid. In case of Lee Pace and Pete Davidson, they do not hesitate at all from the obnoxious sides of their respective supporting roles, and their solid comic performances provide extra humor to the film.

“Bodies Bodies Bodies” directed by Halina Reijn, a Dutch actress/filmmaker who previous made a feature film debut in “Instinct” (2019). I have not seen that movie yet, but “Bodies Bodies Bodies” shows that she is a good filmmaker who knows how to engage and entertain us, and I enjoyed how she balanced the film well between comedy and thriller. Yes, this is another typical genre exercise, but it has some wit and personality in addition to working well as a biting social satire, and I recommend you to give it a chance someday.