High school was more or less the same for everyone, right?
You had football games, prom, cliques, and, of course, rabid, death-obsessed
teen serial killers stalking the halls. Okay, maybe I’m mixing up Tyler
MacIntyre’s Tragedy Girls with my own experience, I’ll have
to check on that. However it breaks down, this puts a whole new spin on the
mean girls phenomenon. It’s biting, wicked, and deceptively earnest.
Lifelong besties and burgeoning psychopaths McKayla Hooper
(Alexandra Shipp, X-Men: Apocalypse) and Sadie Cunningham
(Brianna Hildebrand, Deadpool) just can’t catch a break. And
by catch a break, I mean the social media-fixated bffs can’t get anyone to care
about their blog about the real life murders in their small mid-western town.
That is, until they take matters into their own hands and create eye-catching
content of their very own. And by that I mean commit gruesome murders. It
watches like Heathers meets Halloween,
only with selfies and hashtags.
From tracking down and slaughtering a hunky ex (Josh Hutcherson) to kidnapping a practicing serial killer (Kevin Durand) as a mentor
to staging crime scenes so no one can possibly mistake them
for accidents, Tragedy Girls indulges in and eviscerates the
tropes of high school movies and teen slashers. There’s the lovelorn Jordan
(Jack Quaid), who not-so-secretly pines for Sadie, only to miss her obvious
flaw; the inept local sheriff (Timothy V. Murphy), who refuses to see what
smacks him straight in the face; and local heroes, like firefighter Big Al
(Craig Robinson), who steal their thunder and must be removed in the goriest
fashion.
As cheeky and acerbic as it is, Shipp and Hildebrand shine
and carry Tragedy Girls. It’s all break ups, make ups, and
murder; eye rolls and neck stabs. But for all the vicious psychosis, driven
quests for notoriety, and wicked vamp posturing, McKayla and Sadie are much
more than empty caricatures. The script from MacIntyre and Chris Lee Hill
develops them as both friends and felons, and the actresses give them depth,
nuance, and emotion. Except, you know, when they cut victims up with a table
saw—then it’s straight up splatter.
The leads have a legitimate chemistry that sells a sneaky sweet,
heartfelt on-screen bond, and no joke, there’s a moment near the end where I
got a bit misty. It’s this central friendship that keeps the film from becoming
a disposable genre exercise with a witty premise. Tragedy
Girls could easily have become one of those movies with a killer hook
and concept, but that run out of material half way through and sputter to the
finish. It’s on Shipp and Hildebrand selling their bond that it never falters.
Underneath Sadie and McKayla’s raging narcissism, their
motivation is just to be seen, to be noticed for who they are. Too often
they’re pushed to the back row, passed over in class, and treated like
disposable props and arm candy. Like with Jordan, all he sees is a pretty face
and a pixie cut, glossing over everything else. But they’re done with that. They
stand up and demand the world take note in bold, brash, albeit totally
psychotic ways.
It’s easy to dismiss Tragedy Girls as a
shallow send up of mean girl archetypes and horror movie tropes. The concept is
patently ridiculous and the execution gleefully wallows in arterial spray. But
to skim over it as millennial genre trash does the film a disservice and misses
the point. Clever and fun, awash in pitch-black humor, and giddy with
subversion, this also paints a true-to-life picture of deep friendship. It just
happens to also be a viscera-soaked portrait. Imagine a heart-shaped picture frame
of two friends hugging, covered in blood, and you have a good idea of what to
expect. [Grade: A-]
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