A moderately fun slasher 'Totally Killer' has been released online about how hard it is for zoomers to survive in the eighties. Why this mix of 'Scream' and 'Back to the Future' will basically brighten any Halloween — in our review.

35 years ago in a small American town, a masked maniac killed three popular high school classmates. Each one — with 16 stab wounds on her 16th birthday. The surviving fourth friend now raises a sixteen-year-old daughter with a loving husband and knows self-defense techniques.

This doesn't save her from the knife of the same maniac on Halloween night, after which her daughter Jamie (Kiernan Shipka, our new scream queen) uses a time machine (yes, this wonderful device was invented by her classmate for the school science fair, don't ask) to travel back to 1987, when those three murders were committed. The logic is the same as in 'Back to the Future,' which is mentioned many times in the film: go back to the past, fix everything, return.

Everything, of course, goes awry: it turns out that over 35 years, high school students have changed a lot, and Jamie struggles to survive among the teenagers of the eighties. She needs to somehow get to all the parties where the murders took place, befriend her mother (the coolest girl in school, the local Regina George) for this, and not change something that will alter the future for the worse. In short, it's fun, moderately bloody, and quite atmospheric.

Of course, 'Totally Killer' is not the most groundbreaking film in the world, and the idea of combining a slasher with a time travel movie has been in the air for a long time. The slasher became a meta-genre at the end of the last century: it's almost impossible to make it seriously, so masked maniacs migrated to other genres, or rather, to other films. Combining a slasher with 'Groundhog Day' gave us 'Happy Death Day.' The fruit of a terrible union of 'Friday the 13th' with science fiction was 'Jason X,' and with Southern Gothic — 'Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday.' The slasher barely survived inbreeding with conspiracy horror but did — 'Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers' came out. Even with historical melodrama, the slasher somehow got along, and last year's 'Pearl' turned out.

Roman Kovalev

10 Best Horror Films of 2022 According to the 'After Credits' Editorial Board

Alien invasion, nightmare in a rented house, mass murder on a porn set — this and much more in the list of the main horror films of 2022.

Open material

With 'Back to the Future,' everything turned out even simpler than, for example, with Southern Gothic, because functionally this plot fulfills the main need of modern horror screenwriters: on one hand, to return the genre to the 80s, the only time where it doesn't look ridiculous, on the other hand, to still show the problems and characters of modernity, not forty years ago. And in this sense, everything worked out: the main character is tolerant, against bullying, violence, and school hierarchy, while she doesn't constantly moan about the lack of Twitter but tries to solve problems, meaning the film was made by people who know modern teenagers not from anekdot.ru, although they overestimate the possibilities of social progress.

Usually, films of this type are always nostalgic: traveling to the past allows you to better understand yourself, to see something in the past that will never be in the present. Here, the eighties are a colorful hell with tests on Reaganomics, where everyone is stupid, evil, irresponsible, and drinks vodka. However, this is a reason not to once again appreciate the character types from John Hughes films (and all the schoolkids in the film, of course, come straight from there), but to see where we came from and where we are going.

Ivan Kilyakov

Back to School: 10 Classic School Comedies to Help Survive September 1st

An adaptation of 'Emma,' political satire, Lindsay Lohan's best role, and much more in our list of the best school comedies in the history of the genre.

Open material

Working quite well as a comedy about changing eras and time travelers, as a slasher 'Totally Killer' doesn't reach for the stars. The detective line is decent, but the mask theme is not explored, there is not a single scene from the maniac's perspective (which used to scare the most), due to the predetermination of the murders, you don't really worry about anyone, and this is, overall, more 'Back to the Future' than 'Scream.'

The film owes to Zemeckis's 'Back to the Future,' and admits it, and its main idea. Time travel movies generally have two main plot directions. The first is optimistic, when the hero returns to the past, and it turns out there is some event that needs to be changed to improve life in the future. The second is pessimistic, when returning to the past shows that the future cannot be changed — everything must happen as it did.

'Totally Killer' is a bright representative of the optimistic tradition. On one hand, it's annoying: the value of the plot is ruined, the tragedy of inevitability is blurred, no one learns to take responsibility for their mistakes. On the other hand, it's humanly pleasant to see someone, whether in the past, future, or present, simply get lucky: could have died but didn't, could have become a killer but didn't. It's infantile, of course, but sometimes even not the best cinema should still promise us the best.