Movie Breakdown: Tragedy Girls (Noah)
Pre-Screening Stance:
Horror is having a moment right now. IT and Get Out are two of the bigger movies of the year and every week seems to usher in some new fright flick to the screens. Tragedy Girls looks to play with the genre using the lure of social media and serial killers as its focal point and it feels like this has been done before, but hell, I’m willing to give it a chance.
Post-Screening Ramble:
There’s a weird lack of energy in Tragedy Girls, a sort of laconic “yup, we made a movie” feel that strips it of being as good as it could be. The film centers on Sadie (Brianna Hildebrand) and McKayla (Alexandra Shipp), a pair of attention-seeking high school seniors who decide that to get all the likes, they’ll need to start murdering people. Both Hildebrand and Shipp play their parts to the hilt, capturing the sort of sociopathic mindset of social media-obsessed high schoolers. Director Tyler MacIntyre polishes the film into a candy confection with a heart of gore and blood, the deeper issues of friendship and status obsession just beneath the surface never getting lost in the flash. It’s a good movie, no doubt, but the meta aspect of the film – a serial killer movie about two girls trying to get famous by being serial killers – drags it down. MacIntyre is using the concept of serial killing made cool by popular culture to address the popular culture that birthed it. It’s an interesting angle, but it also makes his movie adhere to the plot points of the average serial killer film (if you’re going to, make it resonate as predictable rather than illuminating). The heroes of the story posit themselves as experts on serial killing but the main characters are also teenagers who’ve grown up watching the same movies all of us horror dorks have consumed. It makes sense for the plot, but it dampens the surprise or the mystery of what’s going to happen – we’ve seen this before because these girls have as well. It takes a film that purports itself to be high energy, teenage whiz bam whatever and makes it a sort of slow, awkward reveal. An entertaining one to say the least, but a slightly flat one nonetheless.
One Last Thought:
Craig Robinson as a sex symbol should be a thing. Like all the time.
